Yesterday, I got a call from my father-in-law. I had planned to take him to Beaver in just a bit.
“Bring a hoe with you. There’s a snake on my sidewalk landing. I almost stepped on it.” He sounded a little winded.
I got myself together and grabbed the hoe. When I pulled up at his house, there was another vehicle there, and there in the yard was my father-in-law and one of the other local residents. The snake had been dispatched with a shovel.
“Hey, M [I don’t generally use names here in order to protect the privacy of others on this platform]. How’d you end up over here?”
M explained that he was putting some trash in the dumpster and saw my father-in-law standing in the street looking back at the house. He decided to stop by and see if he was okay. He’d found the snake and taken care of it just before I showed up. We chit-chatted just a bit and I thanked him for stopping by. He dropped the tailgate on his pickup.
“I’ll haul this off for you.”
My father-in-law has some difficulty with his eyesight, and he didn’t see the snake until he’d almost stepped on it. He avoided the snake, but took a fall when he lost his balance. He was a little bruised up, and maybe a little rattled, but he was okay.
As, M drove away with the de-headed snake, we got in the car. My father-in-law asked who had helped him. Once I explained who it was, he reminisced. “Oh, well, I didn’t recognize him. I haven’t seen him for years.”
“He’s a real good guy,” I mentioned.
“Yeah, I always liked him. I like his dad, too,” he added.
When we got home, I explained to my wife what happened and how M had helped her dad.
Her response became the title for this post.
“The beauty of a small town.”
Sometimes it just takes those little acts of kindness to remind you. It’s the people that are the true beauty of a small town.
