Season's Greetings

In the summer of 1963, we were somewhere in southern Illinios on our first cross-country adventure (the first of many).  I was not an experienced driver and the Nash Rambler was not a superb-handling car.  We were driving a two-lane, and it was raining hard , and something happened (can't remember what) that caused me to brake much too hard. The car spun out of control, first swinging into the oncoming lane (empty, thank you very much) and then rotating into a three or four foot ditch on the right side of the road.

I was grateful to be alive but I knew that I was in a predicament.  How to get the Rambler back on the road? 

Within a minute, a small truck pulled up behind me.  A hale-fellow Elks-Lions-Rotary-Presbyterian kind of guy stepped out, assessed the situation, hitched a cable to the Rambler and winched us out of the ditch.  Took him two minutes max.  He said, "you OK?" and drove off.

Many thanks to that man.  

In 1984, I had to fly from Lebanon, New Hampshire to Salt Lake City through Boston.  We were fogged in at Lebanon and I didn't arrive at Logan until a few minutes before my next leg was about to leave.  Logan consisted then (probably still does) of half-a-dozen separate terminals linked by a bus line.  I went up to a man in a uniform and I asked him where, in the jumble, would I find Continental.  I told him that I had less than twenty minutes to board.  He said, "wait right here.  I'll get you there on time."  He was not a policeman, as I thought, but a uniformed chauffeur to some Rich Person.  After a few minutes he returned, having launched his employer.  He took me to his extra-long Cadillac limousine and speeded me to my terminal.

Many thanks to that man

And to all the other anonymous people who have helped me with life's travels and travails.  

Am I becoming sentimental?   

Comments

[Otis J. Brown]

First it was your compassion for ballplayers who screw up. Then it was your more-in-sorrow-than-anger frame of mind over that Dickens biography. Now this. I detect a pattern: Dr. M, you've become a softy. Not that there's anything wrong with it.