The Men Who Turned Around

Commentary

Monday is the one day a week our ranch is closed to the public. The restaurant is closed, the farm store is quiet, and we try to make it a family day—running errands that have piled up while also doing something fun with the kids.

I have four children, and on Mondays, I usually take my brother’s oldest child along with us. Yesterday, for the first time, we brought his toddler too. That is how we ended up with four big kids, two toddlers, my husband, me and one other adult, Paula, whom we brought along to make the kid-to-adult ratio slightly more manageable.

All nine of us were packed into our family van, which also gets used around the ranch for shuttling people to and from the airport. The two toddlers had fallen asleep. The four bigger kids were talking, playing, fighting and laughing. My husband and I were talking in the front seats as we drove along Highway 46.

Then the driver’s-side front tire blew out.

We pulled safely onto the side of the road. We told the kids to stay buckled with Paula while my husband and I got out to change the tire.

My husband runs a farm. He fixes equipment, builds things, handles animals, and solves physical problems all day long. Changing a tire is easy for him. But we opened the compartment where the spare should have been and found it empty.

At some point, someone using our van had apparently gotten a flat, used the spare, and neglected to tell us.

This is part of living in community.

My husband is considerably less enthusiastic about communal living than I am. I am the one who has continually chosen to build a life in which people live together, work together, borrow things, and share things. So when a tool—or an entire spare tire—disappears, there is an implied opportunity for him to look at me as if to say: See? This is what I am talking about.

He wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

There are beautiful things about community, and there are maddening things. Sometimes, you find yourself beside a van containing six children, staring into an empty spare-tire compartment, wondering whether radical individualism might have had a few good points after all.

We Googled the closest tire shop. There was only one about a mile and a quarter away, so we decided we would have to creep there along the rim.

We had barely started when a large Denali pickup traveling quickly in the opposite direction slowed down.

Then it made a U-turn.

Two Latino brothers pulled up and asked if we needed help.

They started speaking in English. Their English was excellent, as is my husband’s. He is fluent, but Spanish is his first language and simply requires less effort. Within moments, the brothers recognized that and switched to Spanish.

It was a tiny gesture, but I noticed it. They simply recognized what would make communication easier and did it.

My husband explained that we had no spare. Without much discussion, they pulled a floor jack from their truck and got to work.

They weren’t rescuing an incapable man. They were helping a capable man who, at that moment, didn’t have what he needed to take care of his family. They had the jack and the truck. So three men who had never met simply started solving the problem in front of them.

The brothers removed the mangled tire and offered to take my husband and the wheel to the tire shop.

I stayed with Paula and six children, put on a movie, and tried to work.

That lasted about as long as you might imagine.

My 6-year-old was climbing over the seats. The toddlers woke up and wanted to be unlatched. Someone needed to pee. There is only so long four big kids and two toddlers can remain happily contained in a stationary van before civilization begins to deteriorate.

Then my husband called.

The tire shop said it would be an hour and 40 minutes before they could get to our tire. The brothers had work to get to and had already delayed their Monday for us.

I told my husband to explain that his wife and six children were stranded on the highway and ask if they could possibly move us up. We’d happily pay extra.

The man behind the counter understood. He moved our tire to the front of the line.

Soon, my husband and the brothers returned. They put the repaired tire back on and got us safely on the road.

We offered them cash.

They refused.

One brother told us he had once been stranded on the side of the road himself, watching cars pass and wondering if just one person would stop. He promised himself that if he ever saw someone else stranded, he would be the one who stopped.

Yesterday, he was.

His brother said something simpler: “I just think people should take care of each other. It’s the way it’s meant to be.”

I don’t know these men’s politics. I don’t know how they voted or what they think about the issues we have decided define whether someone is on our side.

But I know they are brothers. I know they own Home Comfort Insulation, a spray-foam insulation business in San Antonio. I know they noticed which language was easier for my husband and switched to it. I know they had somewhere to be and chose to delay their work rather than leave a family stranded.

And I know they turned around.

I also know exactly whom I’m hiring if I ever need spray-foam insulation.

We invited them to bring their families to our restaurant for a meal. I hope they take us up on it.

I keep thinking about the men in this story. We talk endlessly about what has happened to men in our culture and whether boys have enough examples of capable, honorable masculinity.

Sometimes, a man helps another man be the man he already is.

He lends him the tool. He gives him a ride. He steps in when something is missing. Nobody is diminished by that exchange.

And our children were watching.

They saw their father deal with a problem. They saw two strangers turn around to help him. They saw three men cooperate without competition or ego because a family needed to get safely back on the road.

A boy can hear a thousand lectures about what a good man is, but there is something different about watching one stop his truck.

Our day continued. We went to lunch, took the kids to the museum, and ran our errands, including buying restaurant supplies at Costco.

The day wasn’t ruined.

I also don’t believe everything that happens in life is an accident.

I believe in God. I believe God puts the right people in the right places at the right time. I don’t pretend to know exactly when something is divine intervention and when it is simply life unfolding. But I have lived long enough to notice those moments when the person you need appears exactly when you need them.

Maybe God doesn’t always arrive with thunder or miracles. Sometimes, He arrives in a Denali truck going the opposite direction on Highway 46.

I could have walked away from yesterday with a different story. I could write about the missing spare and how infuriating it can be to live in a community. Every word would be true.

But that isn’t the story I want to carry with me.

There is so much invested in convincing us that we no longer recognize one another. We divide ourselves by politics, race, class, and religion, and are constantly shown the worst of one another.

Then you’re stranded on Highway 46 with six children and no spare tire, and two strangers turn around.

Chivalry is not dead. Good men are not gone. The understanding that sometimes you simply help another human being because they need help is not dead.

Humanity still recognizes itself in each other.

I spend a lot of my life writing about things I believe are broken. But I don’t ever want to become so committed to identifying what is wrong with the world that I lose my ability to see what is still right with it—or become so busy looking for God in the extraordinary that I fail to recognize Him in the ordinary.

Yesterday, what was right with the world looked like two brothers, a floor jack in the back of their pickup, and somewhere else they were supposed to be.

They saw us.

They turned around.

And I don’t believe they were there by accident.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.