Offtopic: Today You, Tomorrow Me

4 Aug 2021 • 7 minute read

lily mclellan It is the last day before a break and so I write about whatever I feel like. It's not an official holiday, but I'm going to the East Coast to see my kids, who both live in New York and so I haven't seen them for nearly two years. I haven't seen my 93-year old father for well over two years, and it is still not possible to visit the UK without requiring quarantine, it seems, but hopefully that will change before the end of the year. He recently became a great-grandfather since my son and his wife had a daughter Lily Nova McLellan. As a proud new grandparent, I can't resist being totally self-indulgent and adding a picture of her aged a few hours.

Cadence has a global holiday on August 16, so Breakfast Bytes will be on hiatus until Tuesday, August 17.

I like to browse Reddit sometimes when I need to take a break. Every so often, someone will ask something like what the most memorable thing is that everyone has read on Reddit. One of the posts that always seems to come up is this one. I remember it even though it was over ten years ago that it appeared. Even more amazingly, it is not actually a post on Reddit, it is a comment on someone else's post. The original post asked about people's experiences hitchhiking (if you want to read about one of my experiences, see my post Offtopic: John Muir Trail...and Weight where my girlfriend-at-the-time and I hitched back to our car at the start of the trail). Here's a funny thing: the comment isn't even about hitchhiking.

The comment went viral, in the sense that it got heavily upvoted and made the front page of Reddit (a huge deal at the time). A version of it ran in the New York Times Magazine called "The Tire-Iron and the Tamale". Someone took the story and made a short movie based on it (see the end of this post for the video). I'm not even convinced the story is true, but, as journalists like to say, the story is too good to check. But if you are going to fake it, to comment on someone's post is...well...obscure.

Today You, Tomorrow Me

Just about every time I see someone I stop. I kind of got out of the habit in the last couple of years, moved to a big city and all that, my girlfriend wasn't too stoked on the practice. Then some stuff happened to me that changed me and I am back to offering rides habitually. If you would indulge me, it is long story and has almost nothing to do with hitchhiking other than happening on a road.

This past year I have had three instances of car trouble. A blow out on a freeway, a bunch of blown fuses, and an out-of-gas situation. All of them were while driving other people's cars which, for some reason, makes it worse on an emotional level. It makes it worse on a practical level as well, what with the fact that I carry things like a jack and extra fuses in my car, and know enough not to park, facing downhill, on a steep incline with less than a gallon of fuel.

Anyway, each of these times this stuff happened I was disgusted with how people would not bother to help me. I spent hours on the side of the freeway waiting, watching roadside assistance vehicles blow past me, for AAA to show. The four gas stations I asked for a gas can at told me that they couldn't loan them out "for my safety" but I could buy a really crappy 1-gallon one with no cap for $15. It was enough, each time, to make you say stuff like "this country is going to hell in a handbasket."

But you know who came to my rescue all three times? Immigrants. Mexican immigrants. None of them spoke a lick of the language. But one of those dudes had a profound effect on me.

He was the guy that stopped to help me with a blowout with his whole family of six in tow. I was on the side of the road for close to four hours. Big jeep, blown rear tire, had a spare but no jack. I had signs in the windows of the car, big signs that said "need a jack" and offered money. No dice. Right as I am about to give up and just hitch out there, a van pulls over and dude bounds out. He sizes the situation up and calls for his youngest daughter who speaks English. He conveys through her that he has a jack but it is too small for the Jeep so we will need to brace it. He produces a saw from the van and cuts a log out of a downed tree on the side of the road. We rolled it over, put his jack on top, and bam, in business. I start taking the wheel off and, if you can believe it, I broke his tire iron. It was one of those collapsible ones and I wasn't careful and I snapped the head I needed clean off.

No worries, he runs to the van, gives it to his wife and she is gone in a flash, down the road to buy a tire iron. She is back in 15 minutes, we finish the job with a little sweat and cussing (stupid log was starting to give), and I am a very happy man. We are both filthy and sweaty. The wife produces a large water jug for us to wash our hands in. I tried to put a 20 in the man's hand but he wouldn't take it so I instead gave it to his wife as quietly as I could. I thanked them up one side and down the other. I asked the little girl where they lived, thinking maybe I could send them a gift for being so awesome. She says they live in Mexico. They are here so mommy and daddy can pick peaches for the next few weeks. After that, they are going to pick cherries then go back home. She asks if I have had lunch and when I told her no she gave me a tamale from their cooler, the best tamale I have ever had.

So, to clarify, a family that is undoubtedly poorer than you, me, and just about everyone else on that stretch of road, working on a seasonal basis where time is money, took an hour or two out of their day to help some strange dude on the side of the road when people in tow trucks were just passing me by. Wow...

But we aren't done yet. I thank them again and walk back to my car and open the foil on the tamale cause I am starving at this point and what do I find inside? My $20 bill! I whirl around and run up to the van and the guy rolls his window down. He sees the $20 in my hand and just shaking his head no like he won't take it. All I can think to say is "Por Favor, Por Favor, Por Favor" with my hands out. Dude just smiles, shakes his head and, with what looked like great concentration, tried his hardest to speak to me in English:

"Today you.... tomorrow me."

Rolled up his window, drove away, his daughter waving to me in the rearview. I sat in my car eating the best tamale of all time and I just cried. Like a little girl. It has been a rough year and nothing has broke my way. This was so out of left field I just couldn't deal.

In the five months since I have changed a couple of tires, given a few rides to gas stations and, once, went 50 miles out of my way to get a girl to an airport. I won't accept money. Every time I tell them the same thing when we are through:

"Today you.... tomorrow me."