My wife had a similar incident. She was on the beltway when she had a flat tire. Our children and her mother were with her. There was a road crew nearby, and they asked if they could help. She said yes, and they changed the tire for her. All were polite real gentlemen according to her. She noticed that the guards with the shotguns didn’t come near her car. The road workers were prisoners on a work detail. She noticed this when she pulled off the road, and was apprehensive at first, but everything worked out fine.
Wow…Awesome stories of helping the Random Stranded.
Funny isn’t it? Look at how y’all remember these incidents. You can bet it works the other way round, several fold. Pretty cool…how these simple things can make an ordinarily forgettable day or night burn into your memory, maybe for the rest of your life. Pretty cool indeed.
“Good on ya Mate” to ALL of you…each and every one.
HB did a good thing there, for sure. But it’s interesting – amusing at least – to hear the other side of the story too; that is, getting complaints when attempting to do a simple favor. Here in SJ I’ve discovered the hard way it’s generally not a good idea to offer advice, favors, or assistance unless asked first. One time I approached a young male driver getting out of his car in a parking lot, telling him that I noticed as he pulled into the spot his right brake light wasn’t working. He looked at me with a sort of mean glare in his eyes, then told me to “take off, I didn’t ask for your opinion!”. Another time I approached a soccer-mom looking woman sitting in the drivers seat of an SUV, alone on a fairly busy well lit street around 9 pm, parked with the engine running and lights on. I was attempting to tell her that one of her headlights was burned out, she took one look at me, looked really perturbed, rolled up all the windows and drove away as fast as she could. Even when asked there’s a bit of a risk. A neighbor asked me to help jump start his car, he had no cables so I used mine and hooked them up while he watches what I’m doing. It takes a few minutes as his battery is completely dead, but eventually it cranks and starts, his engine coughing a bit. So I tell him to get in his car and keep the idle rpm up a bit while I disconnect the cables, as his car is still idling a little rough. When I disconnect the cables his car stalls. All of sudden he’s jumping out of his car, yelling at me, saying I’ve ruined his car … lol …
There is one dark side to stopping and helping someone though. A good example here in OK is back in the late 70s when the wife of a man named Roger Dale Stafford flagged a passing car down while the car was on the side of I-35 with the hood up about 40 miles south of OK City.
The guy who stopped to help was an Air Force Sgt. who had his wife and 12 year old son with him in transit to the funeral of the Sgt’s mother in law. Their bodies were found later in the ditch; all executed by Roger Dale with a shot to the head.
Three weeks later 2 adult and 4 teen employees of a Sirloin Stockade about 3 miles from my house were herded into a freezer and all executed by Stafford in the same manner.
It took the usual years of legal wrangling before the state executed this POS.
In this case the AF Sergeant’s Good Samaritan actions did nothing but get him and his family massacred.