That reminds me.

[fflo]

susandennis is downloading "Alice's Restaurant" to listen to while she swims tomorrow.  It reminded me how HFS (what we called WHFS) would play the song every Thanksgiving Day, and I often heard it as I drove down to my mom's, across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.  One year, though, I got a flat tire while trying to get to Rte 2 off the beltway.  I got out to get about changing it, decided it would be too dangerous (it was on the highway side), and was looking in both directions, trying to decide which was the better way to walk.  Cuz there weren't cell phones for regular people then, and you just did that kind of thing.

Then some guy stopped.  He parked his vehicle so as to discourage other motorists from hitting us and we set out to changing the tire, him doing almost all the work.  As we parted and I thanked him profusely, he asked me not to thank him but to thank Jesus Christ.

I was late getting to my mother's, though by then I'd called her from a phone booth.  That's a structure in which there was something called a public telephone... well, maybe you had to be there, or maybe you've seen 'em in old movies.  I decided to make an entrance and so carried the flat tire into the house with me.  I think it got a laugh, though I don't really remember.  I imagine it got a "Put that down right there" from Mom.  Vaguely I think that was a year now-also-dead Polly was there for supper.  Good times.

Anyway, lotsa times I'd be losing the radio signal before the song was over, as sometime between Easton and Cambridge it'd disappear completely.  But that year, on account being late, and Jesus Christ, I heard the whole thing.

Comments

[susandennis]

I love that Thanksgiving story - comfortingly old timey

[fflo.livejournal.com]

:)

[liminal-space.livejournal.com]

What a great Thanksgiving story. :)