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Scared Angel

It is the season!  And Mari just told me about a boy in Chicago, or somewhere, whose computer had been stolen, and of the angel who arranged to replace it.

The photo to the right is not from what I am about to tell you, but it is close enough, to remind me of the time I was called an angel:  the only time, ever, I was called an angel.  

I have told it before, but this is the holiday season, and angel sightings are worth repeating.

Driving to the Nokomis Beach Coffee Cafe on winter morning, at a T-intersection on the southeast corner of East Lakeside Drive, I watched a young driver slide across the drive ahead of me, and up atop the snow pile made by the snow plow.  It was a beautiful job:  the car rested on its belly on the frozen heap, with no tires able to gain traction.  

I stopped my big pickup just past the car, on the wrong side of the snow-covered street, and backed up close.  I had a tow cable.  

I suggested I might be able to pull him off the mini-mountain, but that I was not going to crawl up under his car to find a place to hook the cable.  The embarrassed young man said he would do that, but gave up quickly:  not as quickly as I, but pretty fast.  He said he would just hook it onto the bumper.  I said not to do that.  Bumpers now are mostly cosmetic; not for towing.  He said, "No matter!"  

"All right!", I said.  "It is your bumper".  Then I asked him to get into his car so that if I were able to pull him off, he would be able to step on the brake to keep from rolling into traffic.  "Holler when you are ready!"  

He hollered, and I eased forward to tighten the cable, but he decided not to stay in the car.  He got out, the car came back off the snow pile and ran over his foot.  

"Oh, God!", I thought.  "Now he will sue the good samaritan."  

But he hobbled around, unhooked the cable, and tossed it into my pickup bed.  Then he came to the pickup window.  I didn't ask about his foot.  I had not brought a medical kit, anyway, just a tow cable.  He offered to pay me.  I refused, absolutely.  All I wanted to do was to drive off before he thought to get my license number.  

He looked me right in the eyes and said, "Sir, you are a god-damned angel!"

And there you have it.  I am only reporting what he said.






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