A kind act

Suppose I had given twenty bucks to the tearful man with the beard, the guy I discussed in yesterday's post?  Would it really have helped him?  Beyond buying him a couple of meals?  Or, more cynically, a bottle of booze or some drugs?

Who knows?  The effects of a kind act are unpredictable.

My brother and I were 15 and 18.  We had pitched our tent the night before in the back yard of a willing but somewhat puzzled family, and were now biking toward Centralia, Washington.  We had spent two weeks by ourselves, a final bonding experience before I left for college, biking around southwestern Washington. Biking on two old, beat-up, one-gear bikes that would be curiosities today.  We still had a long way to bike, but if all went well we would be home that night.

We were out of money, but I had phoned our parents when we were back at Lake Quinault, and they had agreed to send a ten dollar check to us, c/o General Delivery, in Centralia.  More than enough money to feed us and get us home.  We arrived in Centralia before noon, and eagerly located the post office.  Oh no! No check from home!  I think I frantically phoned the folks; they said the check should have arrived.

We had eaten no breakfast.  It was now lunch time.  Nevertheless, we decided to see if we could make it home, biking the shoulder of I-5 (it had much less traffic back then!).  We got as far as Chehalis, about 4½ miles south of Centralia, and knew our teenage bodies needed food.  What to do?

We found the Chehalis police station and described our plight.  We were two small, skinny kids -- we both looked about 15.  We hadn't had a bath in two weeks.  We had this wild story that our parents had cheerfully allowed us to bike all by ourselves all over Western Washington.  The desk officer explained patiently that the Chehalis Police Department simply didn't have funds for that sort of "emergency." 

But then he looked at us again.  He rolled his eyes and pulled out his wallet.  "Here's a dollar of my own money; hope it helps.  Pay me back whenever your check arrives." 

We dashed off to the nearest café.  A dollar then was worth about $8.50 in today's money.  We gorged on hamburgers and milkshakes.  Food had never tasted so good!   We then biked back north to Centralia and revisited the post office.  Yes!  The check had arrived!  We cashed it at a bank (how we persuaded a prudent banker to cash a check for us two wild Indians, I don't remember).  Then, back to Chehalis. To the police station, of course. We never considered doing otherwise.

Our desk officer had gone off duty.  I handed a dollar bill to his replacement, and began to explain what it was for.  I hardly said two words before he grinned and said he knew all about it.  The entire police department knew all about it.  There was an office pool as to whether the "sucker" desk officer would ever see his dollar again.  "Oh.  Well, tell him thanks," we said, politely, and bid him farewell.   We still had 40 miles of freeway biking ahead of us.

My dad was incredulous that, first, we would have asked the cops for money, and, second, that they would have given us any (as opposed, I suppose, to locking us up for vagrancy).  Was I equally surprised?  Not really.  They'd always told me that the police were our friends.  My experiences during our two-week travels assured me that most folks were good. Now I knew that cops themselves would help kids who needed help.

Dropping a small pebble in a pool gives off ripples, ripples that spread a long distance. A few years later, my generation was deeply involved in a struggle over the war in Vietnam.  Demonstrators and police were  at each other's throats.  Like most young people, I was strongly opposed to the war and supported the demonstrations. 

Many of my friends hated the cops, and sneeringly called them "the pigs," throwing in an expletive or two.

I never could. I never did.