Under the Radar
Something weird happens to time in November. (In addition to that daylight savings thing that was once super helpful to farmers back in the day but doesn’t much make sense anymore.) Time starts to race like a horse at the Derby. The ramp-up begins in mid-October, then by the time Halloween arrives, it is sliding downhill like a snowball headed for you know where. Days disappear faster than the candy we just passed out to Trick-or-Treaters. Ghosts and goblins bleed into turkeys that bleed into Santa Claus and suddenly the shiny ball of hope is dropping as we toast to sweeter tomorrows while ringing in the New Year.
“Tis the season”, so they say. The time of year when over-the-top goes completely off the rails. But it’s rarely the bells and whistles that gird us. It’s the under-the-radar stuff that keeps our souls intact.
Retrieved from https://www.southernliving.com/
For over a decade, a pharmacy in the tiny town of Geraldine, Alabama received $100 from a resident named Hody Childress. Hody was an Air Force veteran turned farmer who, while waiting in line to pick up a script one day, saw a person unable to cover the cost of her medication. After the customer left, Hody handed a $100 bill to the pharmacist and told her to use it on whomever needed it and never to tell him who she gave it to or anybody from where it came. If recipients of the generosity asked, he said to tell them it was “a blessing from God.”. The pharmacist kept the deal--that month, and the next 120-something months that would follow, as Hody Childress came by every four weeks to put Ben Franklin in her hand. No one knew about any of it until the giver told his daughter while on his deathbed because he wanted to see the giving continue after he was gone.
On New Year’s Day, 2023, Hody Childress passed away.
Once the story of his generosity got around, letters and donations began to pour in to Geraldine Drugs. So much arrived and kept arriving that they had to create a fund. And it didn’t stop there. As a matter of fact, it spread. Anonymous gifts began to show up to pharmacies all across the country.
We’ll be hard-pressed to ever ascertain where that ripple ends.
Obscure things done in obscure places change people and the way they look at the world every single day. Sometimes a quiet act of goodness will hit the papers or the airwaves or our screens and word of it will travel throughout the land, but more often than not, these deeds simply plant themselves discreetly where they’re aimed. Sometimes word of it never travels at all. But that doesn’t affect the impact. Angels are everwhere hanging out in the shadows making life better because they are there.
A dear friend who I grew up with sent me a screenshot this past week of what appeared to be a Facebook conversation. The best I could deduce, it must have been off a page from our hometown. The topic, though I couldn’t tell of its origin, seemed to be about our Quick-Stop—Healdton’s version of 7-11. This iconic spot on Main Street, where everybody stopped as soon as they were old enough to drive, was beloved like the T-shirt that hangs on a hook just inside my closet, the one I never think twice about but seem to throw on every other day. Mom’s Minit Mart in all its nostalgic splendor, though, was just the backdrop for the story. The reason my forever friend sent me the post in the first place was because of the memory it evoked for someone who spent a lot of time there in his formative years.
William, the author of the post, (a guy I remember, by the way, as the fastest human I had ever seen run) said the convenience store was built in 1973 and that he recalled having to work up the courage to ask the owner --an intimidating man by both stature and deed (an All-American basketball player who had played for the great Hank Iba and won Olympic gold)-- for a job. Once he did, he got it and worked there throughout his high school years. William then writes:
“Lots of memories from Mom’s. One of my favorite is the “Deputy” Shorty Claxton would sit at Bill Copenhaver’s DX station across from Mom’s until about 11:30 PM when I would walk the deposit to the bank. Mr. Claxton would not leave until I got on my motorcycle to go home.”
His final sentence read: “What a special man at a special time in a special town!”
Shorty Claxton was my PaPa. An “All-American Under-the-Radar” kind of guy.
William’s simple post reminded me of all the not-so-little things my PaPa often did. The kindnesses done inconspicuosly, without request and without expectation of anything in return. And that made me think of Lloyd, the custodian at Healdton High School. And Lloyd made me think of Sandy who worked in the copy room at Norman High. And Sandy made me think of Tom, the driver for King’s Highway bus company in Lubbock, Texas, who always took us back and forth to the airport and the arena when we came to town to play.
This holiday season, I want to slow down time. I want to gently push pause and peek underneath the turkey and dressing and behind the tinsel on the trees to find the good that doesn’t get talked about nearly as much as the bad. Because as that fictitious one-hit-wonder Billy Mack once crooned, “I feel it in my fingers. I feel it in my toes…” It really is all around us. We are mostly just attuned to other things.