A Gift in Black and White
In the early ’70s, before I experienced the sobering revelation that I was getting neither younger nor smarter — a revelation that sent me in search of a college education in the early ’80s — I drove a truck, delivering materials for a construction company.
On one particular day, a Christmas Eve, in fact, all of us in the company had to work until noon. Then we were to assemble, en masse, at the company’s headquarters in Wallingford, Connecticut, for an informal but nonetheless celebratory Christmas party, the spread for which would be laid out on sawhorses, topped with sheets of plywood and adorned with appropriately decorative table drapes, in the warehouse.
It was snowing rather heavily that morning. I’d been dispatched to deliver materials and equipment to what was then called The Southern New England Telephone Company, located on Church Street in New Haven. After unloading my truck of sheetrock, suspended-ceiling tiles, the grid and wiring with which those panels would be suspended, miscellaneous hardware, and scaffolding rigs, I drove southwest on Orange Street, bound for the on-ramp for I-91 north, which would take me back to Wallingford for as much pizza as I could eat and as much beer as I could drink.
As I approached the ramp, I noticed two black women standing alongside a car on the right side of the street. Slowing down and looking more closely, I noticed the rear tire on the driver’s side of the car was flat. I stopped my truck behind the two ladies and their vehicle and turned on the truck’s emergency flashers, the better to prevent all three of us from becoming casualties of some errant driver’s early start on holiday merry-making.
The Spirit
Climbing down from the cab of my truck, I said, “Good morning, ladies. Do you need any help?” They smiled and said they did. I asked if they had a jack and a spare tire. They said they did. I asked if they’d like to get back in their car and stay warm. They said they would. I said, “If you’ll open the trunk before you get back in the car, I’ll take care of the rest.” They did. And I did.
As a fairly fit man in my early 20s, my limited mechanical skills notwithstanding, and despite the unfavorable meteorological conditions, I managed to make short work of the tire change. After putting the flat tire in the trunk, tidily packing the jack in there and closing the lid, I walked to the driver’s window, knocked, and told the ladies I was all finished. They both got out of the car.
As they did, the passenger approached me with cash in her hand. She said, “Please let us pay you for helping us.”
I said, “Thank you. That’s very thoughtful of you. But I’m not comfortable taking your money.”
They said, in unison as if they’d rehearsed the question, “Why?”
“If I’d been the one in need and you stopped to help me, would you expect to be paid?”
They both replied, again in unison, but this time a bit more emphatically, “No!”
“There you go. I already knew you’d have offered me help me if I’d needed it. And I wouldn’t have believed for a second you’d have expected anything for it, even if you said you would.” I smiled.
They asked if there weren’t something they could do to repay me.
I said, “Yes. You can do me a favor.”
They said they’d be happy to.
I said, “Please tell your friends Santa’s a skinny white dude.”
They laughed. I hugged both of them. And the three of us went our respective ways with peace and good will in our spirits and Christmas in our very full hearts.
I suspect those two ladies have no idea the gift they gave me that day — the joy of serving others, wrapped in the certainty of reciprocity and tied up with a bow of Holiday happiness— is with me to this day.
