Y’all know the Canale Bros grocery out in Eads? (I believe it’s technically George Canale and Sons) Back when I was in high school, they were the only thing for miles in either direction. I drove past there every day on my thirty mile trip to and from school. One day my car broke down a little ways from there, in the pouring rain.

I had only been driving on my own a little over a month. I was terrified, because my father had told me if I didn’t maintain my car properly he would take it away from me, and I was convinced that whatever had happened must be my fault, because let’s be honest I hadn’t really thought about maintaining the car at all. But as it turns out, it wasn’t my fault… the distributor cap had gotten wet and cracked.

The Canale brothers treated me just like you would want your own daughter to be treated – got me a place to sit, made sure I called my parents to let them know why I was late, and what’s more, they carefully dried off my distributor cap, then when they figured out it was cracked, they went and got me a new one. They also refused payment, which is a heck of a way to run a business, but what they said was “There aren’t a lot of people who live out here and we have to take care of each other, you’re our neighbors.”

I’m still something of an idiot about cars, but I’ve tried to remember the part about neighbors.

I tried to give him all the money in my billfold, he would take it. I asked “Why did you stop to help me today?” He said “because a couple of weeks ago I ran out of gas and someone helped me.” I gave him thanks shook his hand and we went on our way.

I have since jumped a stalled car off and I even gave the people my spare pair of jumper cables.

Once many years ago I was looking for one of my favorite books which had somehow gotten lost in a move, “The Thirteen Clocks” by James Thurber. I wish I could remember the name of the bookstore I went to… they’re gone now, victims of Borders and Barnes and Noble, but they were a fine little privately-owned bookstore, and one of the things they did was run searches for out-of-print books. This was back before ebay and amazon’s book searches.

Anyway, usually these people were lovely, but for some reason on this occasion they treated me like I was from Mars, with a lot of eye rolling, acting as if such a book had never existed and I was clearly insane. I filled out the search form, paid my search price, and left without much hope.

In the parking lot I was stopped by an embarrassed-looking older fellow. “I couldn’t help overhearing you,” he said. “I want you to have this.”

And he handed. me. the. book.

Turns out he just happened to have two copies. One was in his car. It was a first edition. I offered him money but he wouldn’t take any.

It’s still one of my favorite books – and it’s still out of print and hard to find, although someone has released an audiobook version of it. Which makes sense; it’s the best read-out-loud book in the world. My mother rarely read to me as a child; instead, she had me read to her. There’s a long, clever, alliterative passage which I loved to read out loud; it was like riding a bike very fast downhill. If you can get your hands on a copy, don’t pass it up.