Sanguine Tenacious Tidings

Just Move On

Have you ever been the recipient of, or observed the kindness of a stranger? Tell us what happened.

My answer is more than once.

When we left Texas to take up residence in Pennsylvania, we were driving two vehicles. My husband was Richard then. Richard was driving a truck pulling a horse van loaded with horses and several ponies. I was driving a small car and pulling a boat trailer. The boat was loaded with animal cages with family cats and other luggage that was easy to access, since we were camping out along the way.

The whole trip covered about 2000 miles. We drove a lot of smaller highways whenever we could and tried not to get separated by traffic along the way. Needless to say, we had some small adventures on that trip. When I look back, it was 1971? A lot has changed in the USA. And, a lot has not changed. We did not make a lot of specific plans for stopping places. Just stopped along the way and asked for places to set up camp.

I was always a nervous driver at the best of times on long road trips. I accomplished my share of driving when moving from place to place. This time was different because I was driving the whole way. We had two young sons. The youngest was riding in the truck and the oldest was riding with me.

Early in the trip we went through Arkansas. There was a lot of racial violence in Eastern Arkansas that year. I remember, according to the news, it was beginning to tone down some.

As we passed through one town Richard lost the route we were following. To catch the right street and get back on route he turned into a grocery store parking lot. The lot was crammed with automobiles. The entry took him right by the door to the grocery store.

I followed the truck pretty much with the attitude in the front of my mind yelling. Nooooo! I looked around for another way but there wasn't one. We were on a narrow street turning into a narrow way trying to drive through to an outlet, that would put us back on our route. Nothing to do but follow the horse van. The van moved through and turned out of the back of the lot slowly, me trying to follow. The truck and van took up almost the whole way across the parking lot to the outlet street. People every where staring at us, pointing. I had to stop and wait until the van moved away in order to actually make the turn into the lot and follow.

The door of my car had a stable emblem painted on it. A group of black women were rather close to me shouting and pointing at the car door. Or just the car?

A black man and a small boy were just exiting the grocery store and stood watching the action. Just as the horse van made the narrow turn out the other side of the parking lot onto the street a black women shouting and screaming shoved a grocery cart into the car door with a lot of force. I started to move the car and realized the cart was just sliding on the car not moving back.

I had all the windows rolled up when the women started screaming at us. Now rolled down the drivers side one a little way, then realized I could not move the cart from inside the car. I instructed my son to lock the door as soon as I got out and unlock it to let me back in when I moved the cart.

As I pulled the lock up and began to open the door. The black man on the other side of the car yelled and motioned the small black boy to run across, in the front of the car, and remove the cart. I sat still while the child accomplished pulling the cart back away from the car. The black man waved indicating for me to move forward. I nodded, smiled at him, waved, and followed the van out of the parking lot onto the road . There were no further incidents as we progressed through Alabama.

Later when we were discussing the incident we decided that maybe they could not read the emblem on the side of the car and perhaps thought it was some kind of threat to them.

I've always wondered what would have happened if I had actually had to get out of the car.

I may have written this in a blog before. I guess I really should write memoirs. I have a lot of small adventurous stories, that would make it interesting, maybe?

See Ya!