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Good people...
Mar. 31st, 2001 07:13 amYesterday, just a few seconds after locking the front door of the shop, I heard a tapping on the front window. Never the one to wave off a customer just because they showed up thirty seconds late, I went to the door, unlocked it, and asked "What can I do for you?"
It took me a few seconds, and the folks standing outside were amused at how long it took, but I was talking to Lloyd and Sheri, who were our first neighbors when Galina and I moved to Pagosa Springs back in 1992. They moved, a few years back, over to Navajo Lake, where Lloyd carries on a word-of-mouth boat repair business. (Yes, he's that good.)
After a few minutes of chatting, they left and I closed the store.
Whenever I think of Lloyd and Sheri, I think of all the people that I've known (and who I know about from first-hand witnesses), who have gone far out of their way to help other people. These folks are rarely are reported in the news.
Sure, you have your just basically honest people, such as the fellow who, in 1996, drove into town here and turned a wallet containing $3200 cash in to the police. He'd found it up on the Wolf Creek Pass, where it had been dropped by a local freshman on her way to college. (That, by the way, made the local newspaper.)
And I recall an time, back when Galina and I were a freshly minted team, freshly moved to Florida, and I came home to find G. crying, as she had lost our last $20 bill as she was shopping in the grocery (payday was in a couple of days). On impulse, I hied us to the store and asked if anyone had turned in a $20 - you have to understand, as a born-and-bred New Yorker, this represented an act of...idiocy?...desperation? - only to be struck nearly senseless when the manager replied, "They sure did," and handed us a $20.
But I digress...
No, I'm talking about going out of your way for your neighbor, as our neighbor Lloyd did in 1992, when we were living on the east side of town in a rented mobile home, and Galina called to say that the van she was driving from California to Colorado had broken down near Bakersfield. She was flying back, but what of the van? God only knows what the "Bakersfield Bandit" would charge to fix the vehicle (G and I began to call the garage owner by that name once we found out what he wanted just for towing the van).
In comes Lloyd to the rescue. He has a pick-em-up truck and a trailer, he says. Let's go get the van, he says. He'll only take gas money, he says, as he's just being neighborly. (My Lord, that man seemed embarrased to bring up the subject!) I forget the rest, except that we pulled an all-nighter and a half driving to Bakersfield and back to get the van.
It's not easy - at least for me - to "pay it forward" all at once like that, so I've been paying it piecemeal, helping people along the way in smaller increments.
(BTW, I first head the term "pay it forward" from Jerry Pournelle, who said he'd been helped greatly in his career as a writer by Robert Heinlein. The Grand Master of Science Fiction, when asked by Pournelle what he could do to pay Heinlein back for his help, replied, "You can't pay me back, but you can pay me forward," explaining that, in the future, Pournelle should help some number of others the way he'd been helped. The story stuck with me.)
Oops. I've overstayed my time this morning. It's time to get ready to go to the store once again.
Cheers...
It took me a few seconds, and the folks standing outside were amused at how long it took, but I was talking to Lloyd and Sheri, who were our first neighbors when Galina and I moved to Pagosa Springs back in 1992. They moved, a few years back, over to Navajo Lake, where Lloyd carries on a word-of-mouth boat repair business. (Yes, he's that good.)
After a few minutes of chatting, they left and I closed the store.
Whenever I think of Lloyd and Sheri, I think of all the people that I've known (and who I know about from first-hand witnesses), who have gone far out of their way to help other people. These folks are rarely are reported in the news.
Sure, you have your just basically honest people, such as the fellow who, in 1996, drove into town here and turned a wallet containing $3200 cash in to the police. He'd found it up on the Wolf Creek Pass, where it had been dropped by a local freshman on her way to college. (That, by the way, made the local newspaper.)
And I recall an time, back when Galina and I were a freshly minted team, freshly moved to Florida, and I came home to find G. crying, as she had lost our last $20 bill as she was shopping in the grocery (payday was in a couple of days). On impulse, I hied us to the store and asked if anyone had turned in a $20 - you have to understand, as a born-and-bred New Yorker, this represented an act of...idiocy?...desperation? - only to be struck nearly senseless when the manager replied, "They sure did," and handed us a $20.
But I digress...
No, I'm talking about going out of your way for your neighbor, as our neighbor Lloyd did in 1992, when we were living on the east side of town in a rented mobile home, and Galina called to say that the van she was driving from California to Colorado had broken down near Bakersfield. She was flying back, but what of the van? God only knows what the "Bakersfield Bandit" would charge to fix the vehicle (G and I began to call the garage owner by that name once we found out what he wanted just for towing the van).
In comes Lloyd to the rescue. He has a pick-em-up truck and a trailer, he says. Let's go get the van, he says. He'll only take gas money, he says, as he's just being neighborly. (My Lord, that man seemed embarrased to bring up the subject!) I forget the rest, except that we pulled an all-nighter and a half driving to Bakersfield and back to get the van.
It's not easy - at least for me - to "pay it forward" all at once like that, so I've been paying it piecemeal, helping people along the way in smaller increments.
(BTW, I first head the term "pay it forward" from Jerry Pournelle, who said he'd been helped greatly in his career as a writer by Robert Heinlein. The Grand Master of Science Fiction, when asked by Pournelle what he could do to pay Heinlein back for his help, replied, "You can't pay me back, but you can pay me forward," explaining that, in the future, Pournelle should help some number of others the way he'd been helped. The story stuck with me.)
Oops. I've overstayed my time this morning. It's time to get ready to go to the store once again.
Cheers...
