Tuesday - The Handout
Nov. 22nd, 2005 11:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermoreToday on the drive into work, I had to stop for gas. While I waited for the tank to fill, I was eying the white cargo van parked on the other side of the pump. One of the windows toward the back was broken out and had been replaced with plastic sheeting and duct tape.
I was studying details of the repaired window. God and the devil both live in the details of everything. I find poetry in details, art in details. I studied the the wrinkles in the layers of plastic and the silver tape around the perimeter that gave the appearance of a frame with matting. I studied the lights and shadows of the layers of tape and plastic, and the care that someone had gone to in order to make the jerry-rigged repair look as nice as could be. I was so engrossed in these details of the mundane that I didn't see the van's driver approaching me until he reached my side.
He was small and weather worn, somewhere between 35 and 55, looking in slightly worse repair than his van. He wore a gimme cap and his dark brown hair was tied in a small neat stubby pony tail behind his neck.
"Scuse me, ma'am," he began hesitantly, and then began to speak so rapidly that I barely caught the gist of what he was saying. He wasn't from around here. He was from Shiner. A small town boy. A good Catholic. Something on the van was broken (I never caught just which part it was). He wasn't a bum, please don't think that. He couldn't make the repair and keep driving without replacing the broken part. It wasn't like the old days when you could just spit on things or blow on then or tape them up and keep driving. He needed to buy a new part and he was just seven dollars and 51 cents from being able to buy the part. If I could help and spare a little it would be the Christian thing to do and he also was a good Christian.
I was raised to believe these people were always lying, but I've never been able to tell. When someone begs for gas money at a gas station, I've observed them buying gas with it when you give it to them, not beer or cigarettes like my father said they would.
I gave him $2 dollars and said that it was all I could spare. He thanked me and got back in his van, which he turned toward the auto parts store when he left the parking lot.
He did not go in the gas station to buy beer or cigarettes.
I thought about the money I actually had on me, all of which I could probably have spared. About $7 and change. I'm just too middle class. I know people a lot poorer than me who would have given him a lot more.
And so it goes.
I was studying details of the repaired window. God and the devil both live in the details of everything. I find poetry in details, art in details. I studied the the wrinkles in the layers of plastic and the silver tape around the perimeter that gave the appearance of a frame with matting. I studied the lights and shadows of the layers of tape and plastic, and the care that someone had gone to in order to make the jerry-rigged repair look as nice as could be. I was so engrossed in these details of the mundane that I didn't see the van's driver approaching me until he reached my side.
He was small and weather worn, somewhere between 35 and 55, looking in slightly worse repair than his van. He wore a gimme cap and his dark brown hair was tied in a small neat stubby pony tail behind his neck.
"Scuse me, ma'am," he began hesitantly, and then began to speak so rapidly that I barely caught the gist of what he was saying. He wasn't from around here. He was from Shiner. A small town boy. A good Catholic. Something on the van was broken (I never caught just which part it was). He wasn't a bum, please don't think that. He couldn't make the repair and keep driving without replacing the broken part. It wasn't like the old days when you could just spit on things or blow on then or tape them up and keep driving. He needed to buy a new part and he was just seven dollars and 51 cents from being able to buy the part. If I could help and spare a little it would be the Christian thing to do and he also was a good Christian.
I was raised to believe these people were always lying, but I've never been able to tell. When someone begs for gas money at a gas station, I've observed them buying gas with it when you give it to them, not beer or cigarettes like my father said they would.
I gave him $2 dollars and said that it was all I could spare. He thanked me and got back in his van, which he turned toward the auto parts store when he left the parking lot.
He did not go in the gas station to buy beer or cigarettes.
I thought about the money I actually had on me, all of which I could probably have spared. About $7 and change. I'm just too middle class. I know people a lot poorer than me who would have given him a lot more.
And so it goes.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-11-23 11:25 pm (UTC)Nanny & Papaw used to feed hobos on a regular basis. Somehow, their house was "marked" as a safe place to get a hot meal. They'd just come to the back door and Nanny always gave them whatever the family was eating. Like the song says, "when all you've got is nothing, there's a lot to go around!"
So, you fulfilled the family legacy! :)