A STORY WORTH TELLING
“It is strange that the years teach us patience; that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting.”
— Elizabeth Taylor (1932 – 2011)
“I’m going up to W.R. DeWoody’s Western Auto,” I remember my grandfather announcing one summer day in the early 1960s.
Summertime was a fun time for a kid at my father’s parent’s house in Pittsburg — sleeping late, a homecooked breakfast, playing in the tree-filled yard and afternoons sailing homemade boats in the city park’s pond.
“What for?”
Grandmother said, pouring another cup of coffee.
“See if they have a mower part,” was his short response.
“Why don’t you call?” she retorted. “We got a telephone now.”
The recently acquired black dialoperated device sat mostly ignored.
Sometimes, even when it rang.
“I’m not going to answer that thing,” I heard Granddaddy say often. “I can’t think of anybody I want to talk to right now.”
The number was University 8-3721, I think. All that was required for a local call, however, were the last four digits.
The University 8 was used only to give the operator when dialing “0” to place a longdistance call, which my grandparents rarely did because it cost an extra 20 cents (if you kept your conversation under three minutes).
“I’d rather see who I’m talking to,” my grandfather said, responding to the “why don’t you call” question. “Looking at who you’re talking to cuts down on confusion, builds relationships and teaches patience.
Ain’t got time to talk to nobody I can’t look in the eyes.”
Granddaddy was on to something more than lawnmower parts. The rush between Thanksgiving and Christmas makes me yearn for that slower time when people had patience — except for kids looking forward to Christmas.
From an adult’s perspective, time speeds up every year. But a child is born into the world counting the days until Christmas.
Once considered a virtue, patience appears to be diminishing as the number of loose nuts behind steering wheels keep increasing. Consider the story I heard last week about a driver being tailgated by a stressed-out woman on a busy street. When the traffic light ahead turned yellow, the driver in front of her stopped as the light turned red, as he should have.
The tailgater was enraged, honking the horn and hollering at the driver ahead. She was still in mid-rant when a police officer walked up and asked her to get out of the car and put her hands behind her head. She was taken to the station and held for questioning before the police officer told her she was free to go.
“We’re very sorry for the mistake,” he told the woman. “I saw you honking your horn, gesturing at the driver ahead and cussing a blue streak. Then I saw the ‘What Would Jesus Do’ license frame, the ‘Follow me to Sunday School’ bumper sticker and the chrome Christian fish symbol and naturally assumed you had stolen the car.” I laughed when I heard the story, but that recalled an incident my mother encountered years ago. Back when I was a kid counting the days until Christmas, South Jefferson Street in my hometown of Mount Pleasant differed from the busy, booming street it is now. There was no bypass loop then and no shopping center with a parking lot full of cars, just three businesses facing the street: the Dairy Bar, a tractor dealership and Larry Talley’s small neighborhood grocery ... without gas pumps (because there was no such thing then as self-service gasoline).
Mom drove her green-and-white 1954 Chevrolet under the railroad overpass and slowed at the corner at Boatner’s Furniture.
The light was turning yellow as she approached, and being the careful driver my mother was, she stopped just as the light changed to red.
Everything was fine until a horn blared behind her. A lady emerged from the car and walked to Mom’s car window while hollering about a carton of broken eggs. A conversation ensued between them about whether yellow means slow down and stop or “floor it and run the red light.”
The discussion was short-lived. The light turned green, and other horn honkers egged them both to get on down the road.
I’m a few years down the road myself since that episode. Christmas is coming again, and I’m once more wishing for that slower time when people had more patience, took time to relax and weren’t joined at the hip to a telephone.
My capacity for waiting is better, but I still ask God to grant me patience.
I just ask him to do it now … please.
— Contact Aldridge at leonaldridge@gmail. com. Other Aldridge columns are archived at leonaldridge.com
