Knights Don't Always Ride White Horses

Knights don’t always ride white horses. Sometimes they drive old, rusty pick-ups. This is a lesson Laura and I learned on our drive home from Crown College yesterday.

Our adventure began after Laura and I had been on the road nearly an hour. To be completely honest, it began when I started the minivan at her college. It made a horrible noise. It has nearly 140,000 miles on it, so I guess it’s allowed to make a horrible noise every once in a while. I didn’t like the noise, so I shut off the van, let it sit a minute, and started it again. The noise was better (not gone, but better), and no dashboard lights came on, so we were on our way.

Only, things weren’t exactly perfect. Several miles down the road, a dashboard light did come on. It was the battery light. I had the idea in my head that batteries keep charging as long as you are driving, so it would be a bad thing to stop and shut off the car. “Let’s just keep going,” I say, and Laura says, “If the car explodes – I love you, Mom.”

Nothing changed for quite a long while. However, about 50 minutes into our two-and-a-half hour trip home, the car started slowing down on its own. The dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree, needles spun out of control, and the windshield wipers came on randomly and at a v-e-r-y slow setting. We pulled off to the side of a lonely stretch of road between New Prague and Montgomery, MN, and the car died completely. There were several things for which to be thankful: this road had a nice, broad shoulder with plenty of room for us to pull off; we had cell phone reception (not always a given, on this stretch of road); and it was a sunny, relatively warm day, so we felt comfortable sitting in the van. It was around 4:00 in the afternoon.

Here’s where we made a strategical error we would later regret. We sat in the car and did nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. We discussed options, talked about how we couldn’t call R.J. because he was on the bus at that time, and wondered about who we COULD call to get roadside assistance. It took about 20 minutes before we finally went, “DUH! We could call anybody with a computer to see if they can find some car repair place for us to call.” So we called Emily, and woke her up from a perfectly good nap. She found us the number of a shop in New Prague. We called. “Sorry, we already are working on some cars and we close at 5:00, so we wouldn’t be able to help you out today.” They gave us another number, and we got the same story. If only we would have called earlier! The second guy gave us the number of a place with a tow truck. He said if we got towed into town, he could work on the van the next day.

By this time, we could call R.J., so that’s what we did next. We explained our predicament and ten or so minutes later had three more phone numbers of car repair places to try, this time from Montgomery. We didn’t have a lot of hope of even getting home that night. Would we need to find a rental car or a motel? It was the first number on our new list that turned out to belong to our knight in rusty pick-up. He initially gave us the same response that the other places had. He was closing at 5:00 and wouldn’t be able to get to it today, even if he found the part.  But when we told him we were from Rochester, on our way home, he changed completely. He asked what kind of vehicle we had, looked up the part (by then, we had figured out it was probably the alternator), determined he did indeed have that alternator, and then asked to call us back in a minute. His guy with the tow truck had left for the day, and he needed to call him to see if he could come back. Sure enough, he called us back and said they’d be there in about ten minutes. We relaxed a little, enjoyed the view from our spot on the road, and I even had Laura step out onto the shoulder and take a picture.

When they actually arrived, Bob (by the name on his shirt) and his coworker set right to work. They were able to jump-start the van. Coworker drove our van to town (a couple of miles) while Laura and I piled into the truck with Bob. Fun times! It was a small-ish pick-up, for a tow truck, with a snowplow blade on the front. Seatbelts were for decoration only, and there was a multi-branched crack that spread the whole width of the windshield and rattled as we bumped along the road, as though it would break apart and fall in our laps. After we pulled in at Montgomery Auto Repair, it took Laura something like five tries to get the passenger door of the truck open.

Bob offered us a seat on the bench inside the shop. And when I say “inside the shop,” I mean it. There was no “clean and tidy” waiting area; we sat where we could see work being done. On the bench with us were the daily newspaper and three big coffee table books, full of pictures. We chose the one titled America from the Air  http://www.amazon.com/America-Air-Robert-J-Moore/dp/888095833X/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&qid=1296921043&sr=8-15 Nice pictures to pass our time, and for some reason, we laughed a lot. Probably stress relief. Bob and his crew finished the job in record time (according to him, and I believe him), getting us on the road again in under 40 minutes. We paid our bill at his old-fashioned cash register and thanked him repeatedly. He said he and the other guy didn’t have anything they needed to do that night, so it worked out fine. He didn’t charge us for a service call, only for the labor in the shop and the alternator itself, even though we kept him open past his normal closing time. The car worked perfectly for the remainder of the trip.

I don’t know Bob or his coworker personally. They may or may not have been Christians. But I do know that they behaved the way I hope I would behave in the response to a stranger in need. They came through for us and did so in an unassuming, this-is-just-the-way-I-do-business sort of way.  Thank you, Bob, for coming to our rescue and showing us Matthew 25: 31-40 in action.

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.  He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ “