A Final Thought: The Kindness of Strangers
By Mitch Allen
The first weekend in February, I drove to Roswell to attend my aunt’s memorial service—my mother’s sister, the last of that generation. No, not Roswell, New Mexico, where the aliens landed, but Roswell, Georgia, which seemed alien enough compared to Northeast Ohio. One of my cousins asked what the white stuff was all over my car. When I answered salt, she wanted to know how it happened. I told her a Morton Salt truck had turned over in front of me on the interstate and I got caught in the resulting dust cloud.
My late aunt’s mother, my grandmother, was a Victorian. She was born in 1899 and had all the hallmarks of a Victorian. She put skirts on her end tables so no one could see the ankles of her table legs and get any ideas. Once, when she, my mother and my aunt were walking down the feminine hygiene aisle of a grocery store, my mother asked about a particular product and was promptly told she would have her mouth washed out with soap if she ever mentioned it again.
My cousin organized the memorial service. Her nephew, a pastor in Evansville, Indiana, led the service. His was the only other car in the parking lot that had also experienced a run-in with a Morton Salt truck.
My cousin’s best friend flew in from Connecticut. She’s a veterinarian orthopedic surgeon who told me how she once operated on a squirrel someone had hit with a car and brought into her clinic in Auburn, Alabama. She put a metal plate in the little guy and later released him back into the wild. At the conclusion of the story, she said, “I sure hope he didn’t end up in someone’s stew pot.”
The morning after the memorial service, I left early to drive to the Chattahoochee National Forest to hike to the headwaters of the Chattahoochee River. It had been on my bucket list for years. After hiking 5 miles from Brasstown Bald (the highest point in Georgia) down Jack’s Knob Trail to the Appalachian Trail, I found my destination. I also found myself in trouble. By the time I got there, my knees were killing me, and my thighs were so tired and sore they were spasming.
I’m used to walking on the flat Ohio and Erie Canal Towpath, not up and down steep hills of North Georgia. I was pretty sure I could not make it back to my car. I considered calling for a helicopter, but I’d had no cell phone signal for the entire day, and after hours of hiking I had not seen another soul. And there was hardly a trail at all. Faint swatches of blue or white paint on trees here and there pointed the way.
With no other option, I began my journey back, stopping to massage my legs each time I encountered a fallen log high enough to sit on without stooping. I could do little more than shuffle my feet, so I was walking at the brisk pace of less than 2 miles per hour. It would take hours to get back.
I fantasized about a bear attack or sudden cardiac arrest putting me out of my misery, but one thing kept me going: I could not handle the embarrassment of the national news media telling the world I had died on Jack’s Knob.
When I finally reached the part of the trail that crossed a road, I decided to take it. What still lay ahead was a 2-mile uphill hike back to my car with an elevation change of 4,500 feet. I knew I could not achieve that in the woods. On the road, I had a better chance of a Good Samaritan giving me a lift.
A few cars passed without stopping, and I can’t blame them. I was a hunched over shell of man in a stocking cap shuffling up a 4,500-foot tall mountain road. To quote John B. McLemore from the Serial podcast S-Town, “If you see someone who looks like that, they done somethin’ to get like that.”
Fortunately, a young man coming down the mountain in a red Toyota with New York plates rolled down his window and said, “Uh, do you need a ride or something?”
He did a U-turn and opened the front door for me. I crawled in, lifting each leg with my hands to position my feet on the floorboard.
He was from New York but had recently moved to Georgia. It was a beautiful, crisp day and he’d decided to take a ride in the mountains. He looked like Shaggy from the “Scooby Doo” cartoon—tall and thin with a long whisper of a goatee, probably because he was too young to shave. We had a nice chat on the ride up the steep, winding curves. “You never would have made this walk, you know,” he said. I was unsure whether he meant it as a statement or a question.
“I know,” I replied. I could hear my mother admonishing me: The Lord takes care of children and fools.
When the young man dropped me off at my car at the top of Brasstown Bald, I said, “You didn’t have to pick me up, and I want you to know how grateful I am. Do you mind if I give you a little something?”
He said it wasn’t necessary, but sure. So I handed him a crisp bill of sufficient denomination that he would have a story to tell for the rest of his life. His eyes widened and he shook my hand. “Who are you?” he asked. I told him my name and thanked him again. He said his name was Robert, but I don’t believe that.
I’m pretty sure he was angel.
Or an alien.