Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

A Good Deed Part One: Good Samaritan

OK I will admit, with some pride, that during the sixties and seventies I was a hippy. Of course, being young and living in Hollywood California at the time I was merely one among thousands. I bring this up only to give the reader a general idea of the appearance of my friends and myself.

Three of us were helping a friend move from his parent's house in the valley of the middle class to our little community of love, peace, and understanding. We were in my bud's mandated hippy mobile or as you might call it a VW Micro-bus. It had the standard flowers and peace signs on it as required by hippy law. Don't ask me why it took three trips and all day to move one room of junk some twenty odd miles because this might cause me to admit to various and sundry violations of California law.

The last trip and it was almost dark, we were driving through one of the many canyons connecting the valley to the city. We always went this way because it was just more fun than driving the freeways and it was just about impossible to get the full VW to cruise at freeway speeds. The van was chugging up the hill almost to the top, when going around one of many curves we saw an elderly man and his wife standing behind his big Cadillac.

I was riding shotgun and just gave him a cursory glance, then suddenly realized he was in trouble. I yelled for Jeff to stop the bus and that the man was in trouble. Jeff pulled off the road and rolled up behind them with his headlight still on we all could see the terror in the couple's eyes. I'm sure they both thought that Charles Manson had somehow escaped from jail and was now directly behind them to slit their throats in the dark. It was then that we saw their problem, they had a flat, and when the man jacked up the big Caddy with a bumper jack the car started to roll back. The couple quickly put their weight against the car to hold it and now they were trapped for if one or the other let go the car would run over them.

We all three jumped out of the bus and held the car as the man found a rock to prop against the front wheels. We then went ahead and changed the tire for the couple. The wife thanked us profusely and offered us money but we refused saying we only did what anybody would have done. She told us she couldn't believe how many people drove by some even honking in anger for them being in their way. It was only later that I thought about the dichotomy of the two different worlds thrown together that night. The Caddy and the Micro-bus, the leisure suited old man and woman with the long-haired belt bottomed hippy dudes all working together along that dark canyon road.

They both smiled and waved as they drove off and I couldn't help but think of one of the parables I learned in a different lifetime as a kid in Sunday school. Of course, I'm talking about the Good Samaritan in where no one would help the upper class man until a lower class Samaritan came along to offer assistance.

I could only hope that the couple learned not to judge a hippy by his cover or his Micro-bus. As for us three hippy lowlifes, the driver and owner of the van is now a college dean in northern California, as for myself I was not that successful but I did return to the straight world and managed a career and a family that makes me proud. The other passenger didn't fare as well, he got into trouble was arrested and sent to jail. His life spiraled downward from there and last I heard he was one of the many homeless addicts still living the streets of Hollywood.

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