#Hashbrowns

Recently, I went on a drive to St. Louis. At the on-ramp for the interstate, an old man was hunched over with a set of bags; sitting, waiting, hoping to hitch a ride. I had space in my car this trip, and was happy to oblige. I pulled over. He asked how far I was going, and I told him. He needed a lift to Wentzville. An old military buddy owns a motel there, and he can usually stay at a discounted rate that his vet benefits can cover. The ride was quiet. He would occasionally mutter to himself, possibly praying. I offered conversation at the start, but it was awkward, the sort of exchange made between two people far more accustomed to listening than talking. Eventually, we settled into a comfortable silence as he would doze in the air conditioning, stirred occasionally by uneven panels of asphalt. The quiet drone of NPR churned off the radio, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what they were talking about. Instead, I focused on the quiet.

There was something real there, not merely the same commute in isolation, with the Air cranked and MP3s blasting without any connection to the world around me. This stranger had entered my field of artificiality. The experience was changed, I was no longer in my own little box, with my own little world. Looking out the window, although the sun was bright, somehow the clouds had left the world shadowless, and the wind made the crops and trees along the road shudder incessantly. It was calming and unnerving and deeply significant, a reality on the other side of reality from dreaming, more real than actuality.

I bought him a cheeseburger in Warrenton, then we continued, after he finished eating he resumed his sleep for 15 minutes before we reached his destination. He gave me directions through town to his friend’s motel, where I helped him out and waited until he had spoken and arranged for his stay for the night.

As I waited for him to finish discussing his arrangement with the motel owner, I stood outside in the warm breeze and turned over what that day meant in my head. In a different world, this elderly man would have been played by Morgan Freeman. On the ride, he would have dispensed worldly wisdom, and I would leave the experience a better person, having earned some enlightenment through the simple act of kindness of giving someone a ride. But the real world does not generate meaning this way. Things happen. People just exist. I am not a cynical urbanite who opens his heart to a lovable stranger, nor the closet racist who only performs kindness out of a sense of guilt. He is not a Modern Diogenes; neither a source of wisdom nor a freeloading bum who skirts courtesy, taking exactly as much as hospitality can demand of others. We spent barely 2 hours together. We encountered a human being we would otherwise not have known existed, and barely learned anything about one another. Any meaning we impose on that is artificial.

Although as I left Wentzville, I noticed the wind had stopped blowing.