The Kindness of Strangers

So, I was traveling today from Albany back home to Brooklyn.

The rain started coming down while I was up there, and had reached near-Biblical proportions by the time I was nearing Kingston, New York on the way home.



A perfect time (not) to blow a tire.

Seriously.

I pulled off the Thruway, and, with my unerring Pathfinder sense of direction, managed to get hopelessly lost. Spying a Stewarts sign, I pulled in, and stalking into the shop, got considerably wet in doing just that. The two young ladies behind the counter were cheery and let me use the phone (the total failure of my cell phone carrier up there is a byword in the town, apparently.) They also recommended the chili, while I waited. The man from AAA came in a flash (I hadn't even finished the chili), and, rather than put the spare on, he methodically fixed the tire (!).

So really, this is a shout out to the good people of Hurley, New York; the kind ladies at the Post Office, who traded rain jokes with me and threatened to spoil the season finale of Game of Thrones if I didn't promise to watch it; Joe from Paramount Garage & Transmission, and the anonymous customer at Stewarts who started paging for info from the local Yellow Pages to help me out on a blustery day.

And, of course, my friends at Stewarts, who make good chili. Very good chili, as a matter of fact.

They all earned my thanks for getting me back on the road, but even more so for turning what could have been a major derailment of my day into something that I'll always remember with a smile.

My only regret is that I didn't follow the chili up with some Adirondack Bear Paw Ice Cream. Really, what was I thinking?