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GELFAND’S WORLD - You know those stories you read where some poor schlub is in terrible peril but some good-hearted bystander comes to his rescue? And the now-rescued poor schlub is quoted by the local reporter as saying, "My faith in humanity is restored."
I never bought into that response. If you are so cynical that one good deed restores what little regard you are capable of having, then maybe you are just a little too cynical. I've known a lot of good-hearted people who go to the aid of strangers, so I find those restored-faith comments a bit too much.
However, I have a story to tell you that goes beyond the usual good Samaritan story. You can decide what you will about what it tells us about the depths to which humans plunge or rise.
Our story begins with a little red indicator light on my dashboard (the car, not the computer) which seemed to indicate that every once in a while, the battery was discharging, even though I was driving on the freeway and everything should have been charging. After all, that is what alternators and voltage regulators and fairly new batteries do.
Being the prudent sort of fellow I am, I took the car over to the local service center and had it checked out. The battery and alternator were OK, no belts appeared to be soggy, and the car drove fine.
So there I am, coming back from a dinner out on Friday night, when we noticed that the dashboard lights and headlights seemed to be a little dim. I figured that I would take the car home and redo the whole service center thing first thing in the morning.
Good intentions, as they say. It may not have been the road to Hell, but it was Western going through the southbay, approaching Carson when the car gave one shudder and died. It was like the Monty Python parrot skit -- this car is deceased, it is kaput, the engine is running no more.
So there I was, in the middle lane of a 3-lanes-each-way thoroughfare, with the sun just having set and gobs of traffic. It got dark and it got cold.
So just like the other dozens or hundreds of people that night, I called Triple A.
And waited.
Now waiting for the AAA is a normal sort of thing, but this was one of those episodes where the initial estimate (half an hour to an hour) would have been endurable. But then they called back with a delay. And then another.
The problem with being stuck in the middle lane of Western (southbound) with a dying battery is that eventually even the emergency flashers go out. And there are drivers who are zipping along, not looking for a dark hunk of metal and glass blocking the middle lane, and I can see them in the rear view mirror as they slam on their brakes and just avoid breaking me.
And then there was a knock on my window. It was certainly a surprise at the time, sort of like some scene in Alien. It was another driver asking if I had a dead battery, and did I need a jump? Now understand that the problem was probably not the condition of the battery, but that of the rest of the system that kept it charged up. I explained that a jump probably wasn't going to do it, and that I had AAA on the way. Many thanks.
The night went on, with the occassional nut case flying towards my rear bumper, and many, many cars pulling up behind me, waiting patiently, and eventually going around. They didn't honk at me.
Over the course of that early evening, I was visited by at least half a dozen nice people who offered me a jump or a push or even asked if I was out of gas.
So here is my summary: My faith in humanity is not restored, because it was not gone. Where I am a little surprised is that these people stopped, and some got out of their own cars and came up to mine, and this on a busy street where there was some risk to them. I guess my faith in humanity is at least a bit stronger.
And then the ultimate act of charity by a total stranger. One young man took my seat belt, wrapped it around his shoulders, and using leg power alone, pulled my car to the nearby intersection, around the corner, and over to a much safer curbside location.
It must be something about the laws of the universe, but shortly after, the AAA truck arrived. There was a bit of a mixup initially, because I had called AAA back and explained that I was now on Carson in front of the Korean Barbeque place. There was a bit of a delay because the AAA driver went to the wrong Korean Barbeque -- this one on the next block over -- but we got it straightened out.
Now here is the part that is of possible interest to Los Angeles residents in this charged political moment. Of those half dozen and more people who offered help, I would estimate that fully half to two-thirds were of ethnicities that the current presidential administration hates. I think it is just a characteristic of the southbay neighborhood I live in and the neighborhood I was driving through that a certain fraction of the people are of these ethnicities, even though those helpful people have been subject to the recent presidential tirades. I was glad to have them at that moment, and I guess I didn't need to have my faith restored in L.A.'s minority population but it sure was nice to have them around. They acted in a way that I hope I would have also.
You might think of it like this: There is a certain social benefit in keeping a pair of jumper cables in your trunk. (Of course you ought to read the instructions in how to hook them up and which one to connect first and all that -- there is a limit to being a good Samaritan if you start an engine fire.)
So here's to all the people who came by, offered help, risked their own safety, and basically were human beings on a night when it helped to have them.
And they didn't hold it against me that our current president -- a person a little closer to my own ethnicity -- is being such a jerk towards them. We are all Californians now, and those strangers made it clear.
And just in case you are curious, the AAA guy found a loose connection to the alternator, hooked it up carefully, and after a couple of attempts (my battery was that dead by then), we got the car running and I drove it home. Old radio and television repair guys and ham radio operators will attest that the hardest problems to fix are the intermittent ones.
Addendum
Offered without comment: The new administration fired a whole lot of nuclear regulatory employees, only to realize that this is probably not the best thing to do. There are some aspects of central government that are important. Then, the administration fired a bunch of FAA employees, as you can read here. It's not yet as serious a situation as when Reagan fired the air traffic controllers but given enough time, these guys will eventually do as much or more damage to the national safety. It's true that the president and his family get to fly on Air Force jets under carefully controlled air traffic conditions, but the rest of the members of congress do a lot of flying between the capital and their home states on commercial airlines. They should remind themselves.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
