MAN  AT  THE  MAP

 

                Several years ago, before we used discount trucking firms to deliver from one of our main suppliers, I used to drive 233 miles one way to pick up several items that we did not produce ourselves but for which we had a large customer base, on those items.

                As always, during the winter,  I used the weather channel to check and see if the roads would free of ice and snow for this eight hour trip.

                This is a true story of an encounter on one of my trips.  I always have been a sound

sleeper but thinking about all  I had to do before Friday I deceided to travel real early and so I left the house a little after midnight for I wanted to be at work for most the following day. I had gone to bed at 20:00 hours the night before so I had had several hours of sleep already and could always sleep in the cab, and be first in line at my supplier,  and not wait for other trucks to load or unload at this large firm I was going to be at, Lord willing.

                Several hours into my trip the weather turned real bad and it was raining and foggy.  I pulled into a rest stop just inside Indiana on I-74 Eastbound to use their facilities.  There was only one other vehicle in the parking lot for cars.  When I went inside there was only this elderly man with a cane, holding a fold-up type road map in his free hand in front of the large road map the Hoosier folks had there for their visitors.  A few minutes later, on my way out of the building this same man was still staring at the wall map.  Do not ask me why but I went over to him to see if  I could help in some way.  I had a feeling something was amiss.                

                When I got his attention I could see he was crying and was shaking on his cane.

He told me he was on his way to attend his own brother’s funeral and that he had forgotten to bring along his own eye glasses. He wanted to know where he was on the wall map and if I would show him on his fold-up map where he was.  His brother’s funeral was at 09:00 in Ohio and he was crying because he was now going to miss it. After I showed him where he was he was still very upset for he could not read the map in his hands.  When I gave him my dollar 1.25 reading glasses from my pocket he could read the map and attempted to give me a large sum of money. 

                It was 04:00 in the morning and at that moment I knew why I was so blessed and dumb to travel at that hour when I could have made that trip at a later hour or in the daytime.