So… today’s story, boys and girls, comes from a friend of a friend but I think I can render a faithful translation.

Once upon a time, there was a man who drove a minivan. A well-used minivan with well-used tires. As the man was driving on a well-used road, one of those well-used tires decided it had had enough of hauling the man around. Now, this particular tire did not give two weeks’ notice; it didn’t even give two minutes notice.

One instant, the man is driving along at sixty-five miles an hour zipping right along through northern Kansas. The next instant, he’s fighting a blowout on his right front tire. The upside is that it wasn’t on the left side which could have pulled him into oncoming traffic. The downside is that it pulled him toward the ditch. But, he didn’t panic. Just gripped the wheel firmly, took his foot off the gas and eased over onto the spacious shoulder.

After moving a few bags of concrete in the cargo space of the minivan, he was able to access the jack and lug wrench. After he got the lug nuts loosened, he moved the jack underneath the vehicle. And then… discovered he didn’t have a tool that would fit the jack.

Fortunately for him, some dude driving a beat-up ole pickup stopped. He had a jack and a handle that worked in the jack. He also offered a cold bottle of root beer that tasted pretty darn good on a sunny afternoon in Kansas.

Pretty soon they had the minivan jacked up, the old tire off, and the spare tire in place.

While the helpful dude was putting his tools away in his old beat-up truck, Minivan Man reached toward his wallet and asked, “Do I owe you anything for your help?”

The guy turned around and said, “Well, you’ve got the right idea but you’ve got the direction wrong.”

As you might imagine, this sort of confused the friend of the friend. “What do you mean?”

Beat-up old truck guy reached into the front pocket of his jeans and pulled out a single bill with a picture of a former Union Army general on it and tried to give it to Minivan Man. “Nah, I can’t take that…”

Truck Guy said, “No, this was my plan when I stopped to help you… You’re the one that’s got to buy a new tire.”

Up to this point, I’d been politely listening to what I thought was a fairly good story about some guy with a decent amount of empathy helping out another guy with a decent amount of misfortune. “Are you kidding me?!” I asked the mutual friend. “He really gave the guy fifty bucks?”

“Yessir, he did. You ever heard of anything like that?”

“Well,” I replied, “not until right now… But I’m gonna do what I can to see to it that a few other people hear about it.”

And so, I have, I reckon.

Welcome to the America you haven’t been reading much about lately, eh?

When people take that “Treat others the way you would have them treat you” thing seriously, it makes any place better, doesn’t it?