Mission: Search and Do Good
“Is this a scroo I see before me?” I asked, like some ham actor doing a poor improvisation of Macbeth’s famous line, as I bent to pick up a screw in a shopping area parking lot.
“Yes,” I answered, examining and rolling it between my fingers. “This puny, jagged, spiral-shaped, and pointed piece of metallic substance may be just the tack that causes somebody a flat.”
So I tossed it with a “Ping!” into my truck’s ashtray, and I was off on this day’s journey with a vision. Mission: Search and do good.
I was but one of the growing number of this world’s guerrilla visionaries, like a modern-day Don Quixote, off to do battle with the cursed forces of darkness. But in this case, I was not mounted upon the nag, Rosinante, with sidekick Sancho Panza along. Nor was I even like Gene Autrey on his horse, Champion, with his sidekick “Smiley” Burnette (“Frog”) alongside. No, this was a job that I was called upon to do by myself. By whom? By me, that’s whom.
I, and my old ’78, yellow, battle-scarred Toyota pickup, with its black shell, which has the dubious distinction of being named, “The African Queen.” I gave it this name because sometimes I have to kick it, like “Bogey” as Charlie Alnutt did to his boat in the movie of the same name, to get it to huffing and puffing and smoking again. But my African Queen is a land rover rather than a water boat.
So, anyway, that being said, this looked like as good a day as any to wage war with the foes “out there” — to battle the littering villains and those who do senseless acts of meanness and ugliness. My job was to do “random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty.”
Spotting that screw in H.E.B.’s parking lot was a sign. It was early, and by that one act I had already prevented somebody — maybe myself — from having a flat. It was obvious that I was on the right track.
“Picking up a screw in a parking lot?” I hear myself ask, “Do you call that a good act?”
“Wal, yah,” I reply, “for a simple little guy. A simple little guy can only do simple little acts of goodness, y’ see. Besides, there’s no way I can call it a bad act. I may be a bad actor, but I’d have to call that a good act.”
“Yak-yak.” “OK, forget it, ya monk; go on with the story.”
I read about this idea in a tabloid called The Cedar Post, which I picked up in the town of Liberty Hill, because it said “free FREE FREE free” on it. After examining it, I found it a very good paper indeed. This was so not only because it was free — the first good news about it — but also because of the fact that this paper only printed good news. As Brother Paul said in his letter to the Philippians, good reports were one of the things that we should concentrate on, among other good things, such as that which is true and pure and lovely. That greatest of philosophers, Socrates, said the same thing — that the greatest good one could do would be to think virtuous thoughts, and that’d create good in the world.
So, anyway, this article, “Guerrilla Goodness,” goes on to relate how a man in Seattle became a one-man litter picker, policing his area and how a dozen people in New Jersey got together to clean an elderly neighbor’s house and even plant flowers there. One woman, crossing the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, for a lark you might say, paid the toll-booth operator for the six cars behind her. So, imagine being one of those strangers — the toll-booth operator just waving you right through, saying, “You’re paid for!” If there were any good nature about you, you’d probably do something similar for other strangers sometime along the way.
One convert to this way of thinking said, “Kindness can build on itself as much as violence can,” and that seems like a truth to keep in mind. Some people even have bumper stickers that say: “Random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.” Some write those words on the bottom of letters or have them printed on their business cards and even on placemats in a restaurant, and some people even write the words wherever there is already graffiti on walls. Some others paint over the graffiti. Any good ideas like these should be passed on in letters to family and friends at least. Actually this is the way Christians are to be, and Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts as well; so there’s no sweating that the idea might die someday because, as long as this world lasts, somebody’s going to be there doing what good they can for others to the end.
So I thought this a swell idea. At the time I first read about this, I noticed a huge tree limb in the middle of the road, as I was returning to Kingsland. I had to go around it to aviod hitting it, so, naturally, I turned back and threw it off of the pavement. Something like that could easily cause an accident.
Then I noticed a huge cardboard box top, the kind of top that is used for delivering poultry, so I go back and pick that up and throw it in the back of my truck, thinking the wind could blow it out into the roadway again, is why. I found that it was a lot of fun to think thoughts of good things to do that day.
I so enjoyed it, in fact, that I was now out for another one of those days.
This time I was on my way from Kingsland to Marble Falls with that idea in mind. The idea, actually, has stayed with me from day one.
The first thing I spotted was a layer of Fiberglas fluff in the road. Now, I don’t immediately stop when I see something that should be picked up, as I wouldn’t want a three car pile up simply because goodness was on the march. I didn’t think that the Fiberglas fluff would cause an accident, but it certainly was litter; so I picked it up and threw it into the back of my truck.
“This is actually the way one should be,” I was thinking. And since it can be fun, much more so.” It’s like singing: “Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to work we go,” and on returning: “Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s home from work we go.” And it’s also singing when we’re at work: “Heigh-ho, heigh ho, it’s in the work we are” — happy at it, as on we go.
Yes, like some old western dude, I was now “trailing clouds of glory” on my way to the next town to see what good I could stir up.
“Glory over picking up a screw in a parking lot? and a piece of Fiberglas fluff? Let what’s dead buried be, m’boy; we’re not afficionados of good deeds past; there’s a whole potful of LIVE opportunities awaiting us yonder; fret not.”
Arriving in Marble Falls, my first stop is at Five Doughnuts, for coffee and looking. I also order a little lemon poppyseed muffin. I know Jan and Charlie, the owners there. After mutual greetings, I turn my attention to reading The Picayune, a local newspaper, but I cannot help overhearing Jan’s and Charlie’s conversation about needing to pick up tax forms at the Post Office. This was April 14th; deadline for tax returns, I knew, was the 15th. So I told them I was heading that way and would be glad to pick up a couple forms for them. She said that what she needed was the 1040 EZ forms; she had already sent in her business tax returns.
So I go pick her up a couple of forms and return.
Then she said she didn’t have a tax-form booklet, an EZ one, which she needed as a guide for filling out the EZ form. I looked up from reading the paper with an “Oh shoot,” but then I read about a student needing National Geographic magazines for his school work and I smiled. I smiled because I knew that they had plenty of those for free at the Marble Falls Library, so I was thinking here’s where I could do two good turns in one — drop off some magazines to the student and pick up a 1040 EZ tax-form booklet for Jan on the same trip.
So I tell Jan that I’m heading out that way again and that I’d be glad to pick her up an EZ tax form booklet.
It is funny. They give out the tax forms at the Post Office, but the tax-form booklets are given out at the Library — a mile apart from each other.
I was thankful, anyway, that the library had some 1040 EZ tax-form booklets on hand. I grabbed a couple for Jan and Charlie. However, I noticed that they were out of National Geographic magazines. So I deduced, in my EZ-form-Sherlock-Holmes brain, that this was good. Obviously, either somebody had come by already and taken the whole stack of magazines to the student; or, at least, someone told him about them, and he came by and got them all. Or, what else? The librarian was holding them for him until he could come by. I had to smile at that pleasant thought.
Of course, I could have asked and found out, but I was too wrapped up in my clever deductions. That was the way I wanted it to be, that was the way it should be, and that was the way it probably was.
So there. I wanted it to be a good thing, ergo, it was. If it were otherwise, then I wasn’t having much success on this search-and-do-good-mission day.
“Oh, well,” thought I, “I’m only warming up.” Let me put it this way: Does one become a good badminton player overnight? No, first one has to warm up to it by practice.
But this business of doing good, I found, could get very involved. When I returned with the EZ tax-form booklets, Jan offered me coffee and a doughnut for my efforts. I did a Hamlet’s soliloquizing about that. Is a good deed a good deed if one receives payment for it? No, I thought. But should one refuse another’s need to give something in turn for something received? What does this encourage? or discourage? What was the EZ solution to this problem?
As helping people in their needs was my purpose, I decided to accept the coffee and doughnut graciously.
And that’s a sampling of my search-and-do-good mission for this day.
“Not much,” you say? “Maybe not,” I reply. “But I didn’t want to overtax myself, and besides, as you can see, doing good deeds was not EZ.”