Home  >> Stories  >> The Tale Spinner #2018-04

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IN THIS ISSUE

• Kaufi Delgadillo writes about the kindness of strangers
• Catherine Nesbitt adds to her remarks about Alberta weather
• Carol Hansen sends a birthday poem
• Here are some recommendations of books to read
• Irene Harvalias forwards an example of Irish humour
• Catherine also sends some definitions of "old"
• Pet owners make some interesting remarks about dogs
• Barbara Wear and Tom Telfer suggest interesting sites

In this Heroic Story, Kaufi Delgadillo of Bozeman, Montana, tells about

COMFORT IN THE MIDDLE ON NOWHERE

I was in the Army, stationed at Ft. Hood, Texas, and my husband was stationed at the Pentagon in Washington, DC. It was 1996 and I was 21 years old. My daughter was just a few months old, and I was still recovering from a difficult pregnancy. My husband and I were having problems and decided a split was needed.

I decided to go visit my family for a while to recuperate. I packed up my little car as full as I could get it, and loaded my tiny daughter up for the long drive from central Texas to central Montana.

Everything was going as planned, the roads were mostly clear, and I had planned for an emergency with blankets, a calling card, candy, water and a first aid kit. Then the driver´s side front tire blew out as I was doing about 70 miles per hour. Unfortunately, I hadn´t planned on getting a flat tire in the middle of Wyoming.

When I got out of the car to look, I just started to cry. I didn´t know how to change a flat ... and besides, I had everything piled on top of the spare. The last sign I´d seen for the nearest town was some 60-odd miles away. We were in the middle of nowhere.

After about 10 minutes I saw a truck in the distance. I was uneasy about flagging them down, afraid of all the horror stories I had heard and wanting to protect my daughter. But the truck pulled over anyway, and out stepped a young man, his father and his mother.

The mother helped to calm down my daughter, while the father and son changed my tire and repacked all of our belongings. They drove behind me until we got to the nearest town. The father went into the tire shop while the mother led my daughter and me into a restaurant for a cool drink. When I got back to the car it had a brand new tire.

That family saw how scared I was and that I didn´t have a lot of money, so they bought us a new tire and gave much needed comfort in my time of desperate need. When I asked for their address to send reimbursement, they refused to give one. All they wanted in return was for me to extend kindness in the future to others in need.

Now I know how to change a tire, the oil, and even the brakes, so I will never be in that situation again. I wish I could see that family one more time so I could say, Thank you very much for making such a difference that day. I make sure to extend a helping hand when possible, so I can make the kind of difference that anonymous family did.

ED. NOTE: E-mail subscriptions to HeroicStories are free. Sign up here: HeroicStories.org

CORRESPONDENCE

Catherine Nesbitt adds to her comments about her new home in Alberta:

One thing I neglected to tell you about was the huge amount of static electricity there is around here. Pant legs want to stick to skin; hair is difficult to brush; laundry is very hard to disentangle from the dryer; touching light switches usually causes a shock; etc., etc. None of these little things are serious, they are just very different from life in a more humid location.

The sun continues to shine most days and the extreme cold hasn´t been present for a while. Some light snow is forecast for next week. Old-timers tell me that the weather has changed, and we don´t know what "real cold weather" is. I don´t argue, but I thought -25 degrees was extremely cold!

Carol Hansen sent a birthday card which included this poem by Joanna Fuchs:

Instead of counting candles
Or tallying the years,
Contemplate your blessings now
As your birthday nears.

Consider special people
Who love you, and who care,
And others who've enriched your life
Just by being there.

Think about the memories
Passing years can never mar,
Experiences great and small
That have made you what you are.

Another year is a happy gift,
So cut your cake, and say,
"Instead of counting birthdays,
I count blessings every day!"

These books were recommended to me by someone whose name I have forgotten (my short-term memory is getting shorter every day!)

RECOMMENDED BOOKS

"Tapestry of Fortunes," a novel by Elizabeth Berg

"Chestnut Street" by Maeve Binchy

"The Weird Sisters" by Eleanor Brown

"Walking across Egypt," a novel by Clyde Edgerton

"The Bookshop" by Penelope Fitzgerald

"The Hurricane Sisters" by Dorothea Benton Frank

"Charms for the Easy Life" by Kaye Gibbons

"The Widower´s Tale" by Julia Glass

"Mrs. Queen Takes the Train," a novel by William M. Kuhn

"At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances" by Alexander McCall Smith

"Calling Invisible Women," a novel by Jeanne Ray

"Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind," a novel by Ann B. Ross

"The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" by Mary Ann Shaffer

"Friday Nights," a novel by Joanna Trollope

"The Paradise Valley Mysteries," Books 1-3, by Debra Burroughs. "Emily Parker acquires her late husband´s private investigation agency - and her first case is his murder! With the help of her friends and a handsome police detective, she struggles to uncover the secret life of the man she thought she knew. A riveting box set."

Irene Harvalias claims that only the Irish have jokes like these:

IRISH HUMOUR

Into a Belfast pub comes Paddy Murphy, looking as if he´d just been run over by a train. His arm is in a sling, his nose is broken, his face is cut and bruised, and he´s walking with a limp.

"What happened to you?" asks Sean, the bartender.

"Jamie O´Conner and me had a fight," says Paddy.

"That little shit, O´Conner," says Sean. "He couldn´t do that to you. He must have had something in his hand."

"That he did," says Paddy. "A shovel is what he had, and a terrible lickin´ he gave me with it."

"Well," says Sean, "you should have defended yourself. Didn´t you have something in your hand?"

"That I did," says Paddy. "Mrs. O´Conner´s breast, and a thing of beauty it was, but useless in a fight."

Catherine Nesbitt sends these

DEFINITIONS OF "OLD"

I quietly confided to my best friend that I was having an affair. She turned to me and asked, "Are you having it catered?"

Before the funeral services, the undertaker came up to the very elderly widow and asked, "How old was your husband?"

"Ninety-eight," she replied. "Two years older than me."

"So you´re 96," the undertaker commented.

She responded, "Hardly worth going home, is it?"

Reporters interviewing a 104-year-old woman: "And what do you think is the best thing about being 104?"

She simply replied, "No peer pressure."

I"ve sure gotten old! I have outlived my feet and my teeth; I´ve had two bypass surgeries, a hip replacement, new knees, fought prostate cancer and diabetes, and I´m half blind. I can´t hear anything quieter than a jet engine; take 40 different medications that make me dizzy, winded, and subject to blackouts. Have bouts with dementia. Have poor circulation; hardly feel my hands and feet anymore. Can´t remember if I´m 85 or 92. I´ve lost all my friend, but thank God, I still have my driver´s license.

I feel like my body has gotten totally out of shape, so I got my doctor´s permission to join a fitness club and start exercising. I decided to take an aerobics class for seniors. I bent, twisted, gyrated, jumped up and down, and perspired for an hour. But by the time I got my leotards on, the class was over.

An elderly woman decided to prepare her will and told her lawyer she had two final requests. First, she wanted to be cremated, and second, she wanted her ashes scattered over Walmart.

"Walmart?" the lawyer exclaimed. "Why Walmart?"

"Then I´ll be sure my daughters visit me twice a week."

My memory´s not as sharp as it used to be. Also, my memory´s not as sharp as it used to be.

Know how to prevent sagging? Just eat till the wrinkles fall out.

It´s scary when you start making the same noises as your coffee maker.

These days about half the stuff in my shopping cart says, "For fast relief."

THE SENILITY PRAYER: Grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, and the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.

Pet lovers are renowned for their quotes about their

DOGS

It´s a dog eat dog world ... and I´m wearing Milk Bone underwear! - Norm, from Cheers

"The reason a dog has so many friends is that he wags his tail instead of his tongue." - Anonymous

"Don´t accept your dog´s admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful." - Ann Landers

"If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went." - Will Rogers

"There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face." - Ben Williams

"A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself." - Josh Billings

"The average dog is a nicer person than the average person." - Andrew A. Rooney

"No animal should ever jump up on the dining-room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation." - Fran Lebowitz

"We give dogs time we can spare, space we can spare and love we can spare. And in return, dogs give us their all. It´s the best deal man has ever made." - M. Facklam

"Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate." - Sigmund Freud

"If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons." - James Thurber

"I wonder what goes through his mind when he sees us peeing in his water bowl." - Penny Ward Moser

"A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down." - Robert Benchley

"I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult." - Rita Rudner

"Dogs need to sniff the ground; it´s how they keep abreast of current events. The ground is a giant dog newspaper, containing all kinds of late-breaking dog news items, which, if they are especially urgent, are often continued in the next yard." - Dave Barry

"Anybody who doesn´t know what soap tastes like never washed a dog." - Franklin P. Jones

"If your dog is fat, you aren´t getting enough exercise." - Unknown

"My dog is worried about the economy because Alpo is up to $3.00 a can. That´s almost $21.00 in dog money." - Joe Weinstein

"Outside of a dog, a book is probably man´s best friend; inside of a dog, it´s too dark to read." - Groucho Marx

"Ever consider what they must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we´re the greatest hunters on earth!" - Anne Tyler

SUGGESTED SITES

Barbara Wear sends the URL for a video of the 2018 edition of the world´s largest Ice Festival in northern China´s Harbin:

Tom Telfer forwards this link to the top 20 mind-bending badminton rallies of 2017:

This article claims that dancing keeps your brain and body alive:

These great photos of small kids and their big dogs were taken by Andy Seliverstoff:

This site shows an apartment building in the Netherlands for low-income city-dwellers with a vertical forest, combining solutions to the housing shortage and the global warming threat:

From the CBC: A good samaritan in Ottawa invites an elderly woman in her night clothes to come in out of the freezing cold:

This site tells the story of how garbage collectors in Ankara opened a library with abandoned books. What a splendid idea, if people are really throwing away readable books!