“Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” – Fred Rogers
On Friday, September 27th, the temperature was hovering around 82 degrees outside, and at approximately 3:50 p.m., a great rotted tree, already trimmed of most of its dead branches, collapsed and crashed into the middle of an Irvington street. I heard the sound and rushed to my open door and looked through the screen. A pickup truck, undeterred by the blockage, rolled onto the grass that lines the street side of the sidewalk, and worked its way past the debris. As is my wont, I blocked my granddaughter behind the screen door and grabbed my camera. (Wait: it is not my wont to lock up my granddaughter. The camera grabbing thing; that’s the ticket.) After snapping a few pictures, I went back into the house and got my cellphone.
My next-door neighbor ran into the street and started to grab the limbs of the downed tree. The neighbors two doors down responded to my inquiry about the non-emergency police number by saying that I could “look it up,” which I did. I went back into the house and scooped up my granddaughter while dialing for help, reporting that a tree had fallen across a city street. As Myah rode on my hip, an operator informed me that the Indianapolis Department of Transportation would be notified. I went back into the street. My daughter arrived to find our neighbor holding Myah while I grappled with the broken branches of the tree, trying to clear a path through the narrow street. Lauren loves construction/destruction work, so she grabbed an axe and proceeded to try to chop limbs from the tree. I briefly noticed three young men bicycling past, but after placing my granddaughter on the grass of my lawn, looked up to see those same three, having dismounted their steeds, attacking the obstruction, ripping branches from the rotten tree trunk, as two old men and two women watched in wonder.
The adults cautioned the children and hovered over them as they toiled, but the three boys politely went about the work of removing the tree from the street, ultimately posing — at my request — in self-conscious triumph behind the carcass, three selfless, school-aged warriors who had come to the aid of a segment of their community.
Fred Rogers’ mother, when he was young, gave him the advice quoted at the head of this column, advice that has often been used at times of great disasters. A dead tree dropping onto the blacktop of a small city street does not qualify as a great disaster, but there were helpers at the site of the blockage of that street, three young men on their way home from school who paused in their passage long enough to help two old men and two women rake debris from the street, and wrestle a decayed and disintegrating tree from the street. I gave the three young men my business card and asked that their parents and/or guardians call me so that I might cite their good works in this publication. I did not hear from all three groups, so I will merely say here to them, that they should be proud of the unselfish work done by those three young men, in service to their community and to themselves, as decent human beings, as helpers.
Thanks, guys.
cjon3acd@att.net
