Editor:
I’m a big-city boy and have always found it annoying that small-town people think of themselves as morally superior to people like me. It is true that the gangs we see on TV come from big cities, but that is because they are convenient to broadcasting stations. So I thought.
Last Sunday, on Oct. 1, my wife and I were moving from Canada to California in a nasty, cold fall downpour. We had a flat on I-5 south of Salem and I was totally unprepared. I didn’t even have a cell phone or even a jack. I hoped somebody would stop and phone for help.
Nobody stopped in the cold rain for about 20 minutes. Then Ms. Yvonne Ellison of Sweet Home and her son, Krystapher Bandy of Lebanon, stopped to help. I have a bad back and was of no use in removing the flat. Yvonne tried to remove the flat, didn’t quite succeed, and managed to ruin her tire iron.
She phoned Transport Oregon for help and waited with us, since the assistance driver needed to keep contact on the phone to make sure he found us.
It turned out to be a hard job for the Transport Oregon man because the tire nut had been tightened by Paul Bunyan or Popeye. The Transport man was extraordinarily nice.
When the spare was on, Krystapher and Yvonne guided us to a motel in Albany very close to Les Schwab, the tire dealer.
Yvonne then delivered her son and his girlfriend to Lebanon and continued home. It is not as though Yvonne had nothing better to do. She works as a truck-driver in Albany.
Unbelievably enough, we had a second flat tire at the motel. I asked the tire dealer about a tow truck, but they sent a man to the motel who got the tire inflated enough to get the car to the shop and didn’t even charge me for that. The total cost was about $100, including a replacement tire and tire rim.
I still don’t think small-town people are as morally superior to big-city people as they sometimes think. But I am no longer so sure.
Sam Revusky
La Mesa, Calif.