Thanksgiving Day Ride

So, today was Thanksgiving. I was, first and foremost, thankful for such a gorgeous day; 55 degrees, basically no wind… fabulous! I went out for a nice ~1 hour ride, there were so few cars that it was almost creepy at times. As I passed the location of yesterday’s dog incident there were no dogs, but there was a deer carcass, right where the one dog had appeared from, which goes a long way toward explaining his behavior.

As I turned onto my street, on my way home, I passed a man pushing an old pickup to the side of the road. I started to stop and help push, but realized that I wouldn’t be too much help slipping around on bike cleats. As I rolled into my yard, I asked if he needed any help.

“I could use a jump, if you have a car,” he replied.

No problem, I replied, just let me run inside. I ran in, put on some regular shoes and a jacket, and grabbed my car keys. Pulling my car around to his, I asked if he was sure that was all that was wrong. He assured me that it was, that his ignition switch (or something; still pumped from my ride, I wasn’t listening too closely) had gone bad, that he’d filed something down (again; not paying close attention) and had been using a screwdriver to turn the switch. He had left it on, thus draining the battery. I mention that he’s picked a bad day for car trouble as there’s no one around (apparently almost the entire population of Xenia spends Thanksgiving elsewhere). Laughing, he agrees.

I open my hood, he hooks up the cables, then asks if I’ll get in his truck and push in the clutch, he can handle the gas and the starter from there. No problemo. He gets it running pretty quickly and all is well.

As I’m closing my hood, he’s thanking me very graciously and has fished a wad of bills out of his pocket, wanting to give me some money “for my trouble”.

“Seriously, dude; all I did was pull my car around, don’t even worry about it,” I told him.

He thanks me again, saying that I’m a “lifesaver” and that “what comes around goes around” (an awkward turn of phrase, but I knew what he meant). He goes on his way, I park my car and go back inside.

It wasn’t until quite a bit later that it occurred to me that there might be a chance the truck was stolen (I really don’t think it was). I felt a small surge of… what? Not exactly pride, but something, realizing that; faced with a strange black man and a pickup that he has to start with a screwdriver, my first instinct was to help, not to automatically assume he’d stolen it. He seemed very genuine and the color of his skin had in no way colored my perception of him.

Now, if we, as a people, can just evolve to the point where we don’t give these things a second thought, then we’ll all have something to be truly thankful for.