A Common Act of Kindness
Near the small town where I grew up in the Mojave Desert is Otto’s Mountain. It is a large block of economically useless igneous rock, shot through with occasional veins of quartz. It is a big thing, several miles around and perhaps a thousand feet higher than the surrounding terrain. It’s a very common mountain, except for its’ story. Otto’s story.
Otto was a German who had immigrated to the U.S. after World War I. He had fought for the Kaisers army then, and when World War II broke out he attempted to enlist and fight for his new home, the U.S.A. He said he was rejected because he was too old , but perhaps his previous life in Germany also had something to do with it. In the 1950’s he worked for several years as a custodian on oil rigs off of Long Beach Harbor. The local story was that he had been a meticulous, orderly cleaner, and eventually as a reward this somehow led to him being given title to, or rights somehow to go dig for gold in this unremarkable mountain in the middle of nowhere in the barren Mojave. The story never quite made sense to me even as a kid, but it was what it was.
He was small and wiry, with a perennial dark tan, shocking blue eyes and a mop of snow white hair. He gave himself literal bowl haircuts from time to time, which made him look like an escapee from a Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale story. But most of all, he was happy, almost joyful each time I saw him.
He did not drive, and did not own a vehicle. Once a week, on Saturdays, he would push an empty wheelbarrow into town, a journey that was nearly two miles over the raw desert. In and out of sandy washes, between the scrub brush, rocks, and other obstacles between his home in the mountain and the center of town, where my family owned the only grocery store for 60 miles in any direction. He would load up his wheelbarrow with groceries and supplies, check for his mail, and often have a chat with my father. Up until the early 1960’s Dad would order him mining supplies, including dynamite, blasting caps and fuses, through his connections in the mining world. Explosives would show up on the grocery truck from time to time, and they would be stored in a cool warehouse for Otto until his next trip to town. Explosives were just another tool, until the social turmoil of the 1960’s eventually put an end to that.
He would also buy hard candies at our store, and any of the handful of children who lived in the town would get a piece of candy from Otto if they happened to show up early at opening time, around 8:00 a.m. this soon became a ritual, and most of the population of our two room school house would happen to be hanging around the market early on Saturday mornings. Some of us would also follow him along his well worn trail towards his mountain, chatting with this amiable little man with the funny accent. It was completely harmless, but eventually some parents expressed a concern, and so Otto switched his weekly trip to Fridays, when we were all trapped in school.
Otto was known by all and universally liked by everyone. When I began to drive, around the eighth grade, we would occasionally bounce our home made jalopy dune buggies up the road to his cave for a visit. He remembered our names, and would welcome us into his home. Depending upon the time of year we would either sit outside on simple wooden benches made of mining timbers, or we would retreat to the coolness of his indoor cave, a tunnel that went back into the mountain 40 feet or more and then widened into a simple room. There was a cot, a simple table and a couple of more benches made from the rough cut mining lumber. He was set up to live either indoors or outdoors or both, depending upon the time of year and the temperature and weather. His camp was fastidious, though there was no one else there to impress. It was just who he was. Once he made us lemonade, squeezing the juice into glasses of water he poured from a glass gallon jug wrapped in burlap, adding sugar as he told us tales of his earlier life. We sat in front of his cave home, and listened to stories about World War I, his travels to the south Pacific, and an Island where he said “ The girls wore grass skirts and nothing else “, with a chuckle. Our 13 year old minds ran wild; this was high adventure, and slightly scandalous to boot.
There was no high school in the town, and so I was sent away to a Catholic Boys School in Southern California, and then eventually I would go to college in Colorado. At some point on a trip home I was told that Otto had grown to old to push his wheelbarrow into town. A local woman, Lois, had taken it upon her self to go up to his cave in the mountain at least once a week to take him groceries and check on him. No agency paid her to do it; it was just something that needed to be done in our little community and so she did it. She would bounce her pick up truck up the crude road, and take him the daily papers for every day for the previous week, so he could keep up on the worldly happenings. Sometimes she would bring him into town with her, and he would sit in her truck in front of our little market for an hour or so, chatting with anyone who passed by that knew him. The last time I saw Otto he was in that truck, sitting contentedly and enjoying the human company. I was in college, he remembered my name and wanted to know how my studies were going. I stood by the truck and chatted with him for a while, a smiling, congenial old man who seemed content with his life.
Lois did this for a year or more, until it became evident that Otto could no longer live alone. Then, she moved him into an ancient, decrepit but clean little motel that her grandmother owned and still operated. For the last months of his life they checked on him in his little cabin, helping him as needed. When he died peacefully there, she had him cremated and quietly took his ashes back to his mining camp and spread his ashes there.
When I returned home from college one particular semester break I learned that Otto had died, and how Lois had cared for him in his last days. I don’t know if any money ever changed hands; if it did, it must have been a very modest amount. Lois had cared for him, a man alone with no family dying in a country not his own. But he had been a good man, a good person, and she saw that, and so she had taken it upon herself to do what needed doing. No governmental entities involved, no welfare issues, just one person doing right to another.
I don’t know if their is a deity present in our universe; I suspect not, but we all get our own opinion on that. If there is, I think it would look at this simple story and say, there, humans, that is what I want from you. Forget all the nonsense, the insane gyrations to acquire money and fame and power. Just be good to each other. You all know what that means, and you should recognize when an opportunity to do so comes your way. Is this too much to ask?
Two simple people in a tiny town, one making an honorable living through his own labors, and another recognizing the good in him and quietly responding to it.That may be about as good as it gets, or as good as we can wish for. A common act of kindness.
No comments:
Post a Comment