Pay It Forward – A Real Story

Since this is my first post I want to post a series of three post about my first Real Adventure. It is TRUE and as accurate as I can make it these forty two years later. I hope you enjoy it.

One of my favorite movies is "Pay It Forward". If you haven’t seen it you really should find it and watch it a couple of times. The reason I say a couple of times is that the first time through you will enjoy it without giving it much thought. Then, if you are like me, you will ask yourself "How did the start track back to the end?" and you will watch it again. I found it on NetFlix but I’m sure you can find it anywhere they rent DVD’s.

Many of you will know what the "Pay It Forward" idea, or movement, is. For those of you that don’t let me take a few moments to explain. It is simply helping someone who needs help without any thought of payment. You help them because someone helped you in the past. When you help the person you simply ask them to pass it on to someone else in the future. By helping them you have paid your debt to the person that helped you. For additional information check out this site.

Many of you think that the "Pay It Forward" idea started with the movie. It didn’t. In fact I came into first contact with that idea while I was hitchhiking through the middle of Nebraska in February 1959. Let me tell you that the middle of Nebraska IS NOT the place to be hitchhiking in February.

Now for the real story. I enlisted in the Army in August 1958. At that time we lived in Washington so I enlisted in Portland, Oregon which was the nearest Army recruiter. After basic and Advanced training I found myself on the East Coast waiting for orders. When the orders came through wouldn’t you know that the Army was sending me to Germany. They gave me sixty dollars and a thirty day leave and told me to report to Fort Dix, New Jersey after my leave. I had just turned eighteen years old about three months earlier. Here I was, thousands of miles from home, not enough money for even a one way ticket home, thirty days before I had to leave for Germany, and I wouldn’t see my family for at least two years. I just had to get home. I shipped most of my gear to the Fort Dix bus station with instructions to hold it until I got there to pick it up. That was common practice in those days. Then I picked up my small overnight bag, we called it an AWOL bag, and started hitchhiking for the West Coast which was somewhere around 3000 miles away. That was a very interesting trip. In the two post I’ll tell the whole story about the trip to Oregon and back to Fort Dix but for now I’ll concentrate on the subject of "Pay It Forward". If any of you would like to hear about my trip let me know in a comment. Actually, in the eleven months from about April 1957 to March 1958 I hitchhiked over eleven thousand miles. I have some interesting stories I can tell but I’m not sure anyone is interested. If you are, leave a comment.

Now back to the story. Here I was, hitchhiking through central Nebraska on US Highway 30, if I remember right, and I was very cold and very hungry. I was in uniform, which helped a lot in those days, but I certainly wasn’t dressed for that cold of weather. Someone had told me they were going to the next town, I always made sure to ask, but they didn’t tell me the next town was way off the road I was on. Rather dumb of both of us. From then on I asked if the town was on this highway. Anyway, when they started to turn North off the highway I got out and was in for a long, cold walk to the next place to get warm. Then the Good Lord sent someone to save me. I mean it when I say save me. You can’t imagine how cold it can get out there in the winter if you aren’t from that area.

I was walking along the highway in the early evening as much to keep from freezing as to get to the next town when a car pulled up and stopped. It was an Air Force Sergeant, his wife and a baby that must have been a couple of years old. After I got in and we started talking I told him where I started, where I was heading and why I was hitchhiking instead of taking a bus. He was stationed at an Air Base somewhere not to far from where he picked me up. He pointed out the place where he should have turned and told me he was going to take me on to the next town. As it turned out the next town was about fifty miles away. We went through some small towns but he wanted to get me to a large enough town to have a bus station for me to get and stay warm over night if I wanted. When we got to the place he was going to drop me off he pulled into a diner and took me in for a burger and something to drink. He paid for it all. As he was getting ready to leave I thanked him and told him if he would give me his address I would send him some money to pay for the gas and food as soon as I got paid.

I will remember for the rest of my life what he told me. He said something like this; "You don’t owe me anything. A few years back I was in the same place you are now. A Army Sergeant gave me a ride and fed me. I’ll tell you like he told me. Just pass it on to as many people as you can. The world will be a far better place in no time."

I have been passing it on ever since. If I’m by myself I NEVER pass a hitchhiker. I always stop. I don’t care how rough or dirty they look, what time of the day or night it is and I certainly don’t care what color their skin is. I’m a little more selective when my wife is with me and we have had some interesting pickups but those stories for another day. Sometimes if they look like they really need it I give them some money when they get out.

I remember one time I picked up a young lady with a very small baby. I gave her half of what I had. It only came to about ten dollars but she was so happy to have some money "for some baby food".

I do want to take the time to tell you about my most interesting pickup. I don’t tell the story often and sometimes when I do people just look at me and smile. They know I have to be lying. People that know me have no doubts that I’m telling the truth.

It was summer about four or five years ago and I was coming home from Davenport Iowa. I live in Le Claire. To get home I use Interstate 80. As I was coming down the on ramp to I-80 I saw a hitchhiker very close to the end of the ramp right where it enters the Interstate. Just before I got there he stepped out in the middle of the ramp waving both hands. I had planned to stop anyway so I pulled over. He got in and I saw that he had left his bag along the road. I reminded him to get it and a minute or two later we were on our way. It is about 10 or 12 miles to Le Claire from there but that gave us a little time to talk.

As soon as we started talking I knew that he had a disability of some sort but wasn’t going to bring it up. Some people are very touchy about things like that.
Very shortly, maybe just a couple of minutes, he told me he had Down’s Syndrome and was trying to get home. I asked him where he lived and he told me "across the big bridge". OK, that means just across the Mississippi River which is just across the bridge from my home. I told him I would take him over there so he didn’t have to try to get across the bridge.

He thanked me and started telling me his story. To the best of my memory it goes like this. He had wanted to go visit a friend of his who lived in Waterloo, Iowa so he drove all the way up there. My wife thinks it was Minneapolis, Minnesota but I don’t think it was. Now he has my attention. Where is his car? While in Waterloo he went into a restaurant and while he was in there someone put a bomb in his car. OK, that don’t sound right so I asked him some questions. He smokes. He had been smoking before he went in the restaurant. His car burst into flames when he came back out and opened the door. Sounds to me like he dropped a cigarette on the car seat and it was just waiting for some air to really get going. But I didn’t debate it with him. He had lost everything except his small bag when his car burned up so he started hitchhiking home.

He managed to get a ride with a trucker that took him from Waterloo to Iowa City. That’s about eighty five miles. Then he started walking I-80 and had walked all the way from Iowa City to Davenport. No wonder he jumped out in front of me. That’s about fifty five miles. The trucker had wrote down instructions on how to get home. He had told him to take I-80 to I-74 and then take it East to his house. Well, he doesn’t live just across the bridge, that’s for sure. So, I start questioning him. I found out that it wasn’t the Mississippi River Bridge he lives across. It’s the bridge across the Illinois River at Peoria, Illinois. He didn’t know the name of the river or the city but I did from the description he gave me. Well, no big thing, it’s only about ninety eight miles from my house to Peoria. About now we came to the place where I-74 starts. It goes through the Quad-Cities and then joins back up with I-80 on the other side. Since I now knew where we were going I went the shortest and fastest way which was to bypass the cities. When we passed the I-74 exit I thought he was going to have a heart attack. The truck driver said he had to take I-74 and it was back there. He was crying and sure he was lost and would never get home. It took a few minutes to calm him down but I finally convinced him I knew exactly where we were going.

I figured I better call my wife and let her know I would be "a little late" and she was surprised but agreed that I had to get this guy home so he didn’t get lost or hurt.

We crossed the Mississippi River and continued on to Peoria and I figured we were about there. Wrong. When he saw "The big bridge" he was as happy as anyone I ever saw. He knew where he was now. All we had to do is keep on this road. Now I’m starting to get a little concerned. Just how far do we keep on this road? The answer shocked me. We were headed for Champaign, Illinois. He didn’t know the name of the city he lived in but he did a great job describing the way to get there. Oh, well, I’m this far. How does the old saying go? In for an ounce in for a pound, or something like that. It’s about 90 miles from Peoria to Champaign. Better call my wife again.

The rest of the trip was just some friendly talking and having fun. We got to Champaign and he knew exactly how to get home. I took him right to his door. I couldn’t believe how happy he was when he saw his house. He thanked me and I was on my way home. I had drove him just over 200 miles.

When I got home, my wife agreed that I had no other choice. It had to be done. By the way, I was late for supper I always figured the Good Lord put him in my path and it was something I had to do. Also, I now had no doubt that I had passed it on just like that Air Force Sergeant had told me to do so many, many years before.

I hope you enjoyed my little story. You have my word that it is true, every word of it, and I take my word very seriously. If you would like to hear more about things like this leave a comment and let me know.

Until Next Time
Have A Great Day
Bob Jones