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From: Lil Stinker NP-g07 <anywhere@uwant2.com>
Newsgroups: alt.fan.rolex
Subject: Re: A very specal friend
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 17:43:22 -0500
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On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 16:38:05 GMT, "Rolex" <Rolex@webmaster.com> wrote:
>Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance of Johns
>Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore We lived downstairs and rented the upstairs
>rooms to out patients at the clinic. One summer evening as I was fixing
>supper, there was a knock at the door.
>
> I opened it to see a truly awful looking man. "Why, he's hardly taller
>than my eight-year-old." I thought as I stared at the stooped, shriveled
>body. But the appalling thing was his face, lopsided from swelling, red and
>raw.
>
> Yet his voice was pleasant as he said, "Good evening. I've come to see
>if you've a room for just one night. I came for a treatment this morning
>from the eastern shore, and there's no bus 'til morning." He told me he'd
>been hunting for a room since noon but with no success, no one seemed to
>have a room. "I guess it's my face... I know it looks terrible, but my
>doctor says with a few more treatments..."
>
> For a moment I hesitated, but his next words convinced me: "I could
>sleep in this rocking chair on the porch. My bus leaves early in the
>morning."
>
> I told him we would find him a bed, but to rest on the porch. I went
>inside and finished getting supper. When we were ready, I asked the old man
>if he would join us. "No thank you. I have plenty." And he held up a brown
>paper bag.
> When I had finished the dishes, I went out on the porch to talk with him
>a few minutes. It didn't take a long time to see that this old man had an
>oversized heart crowded into that tiny body. He told me he fished for a
>living to support his daughter, her five children, and her husband, who was
>hopelessly crippled from a back injury.
>
> He didn't tell it by way of complaint; in fact, every other sentence was
>prefaced with a thanks to God for a blessing. He was grateful that no pain
>accompanied his disease, which was apparently a form of skin cancer. He
>thanked God for giving him the strength to keep going.
>
> At bedtime, we put a camp cot in the children's room for him. When I
>got up in the morning, the bed linens were neatly folded and the little man
>was out on the porch.
>
> He refused breakfast, but just before he left for his bus, haltingly, as
>if asking a great favor, he said, "Could I please come back and stay the
>next time I have a treatment? I won't put you out a bit. I can sleep fine
>in a chair." He paused a moment and then added, "Your children made me feel
>at home. Grownups are bothered by my face, but children don't seem to
>mind."
>
> I told him he was welcome to come again.
>
> And on his next trip he arrived a little after seven in the morning. As
>a gift, he brought a big fish and a quart of the largest oysters I had ever
>seen! He said he had shucked them that morning before he left so that
>they'd be nice and fresh. I knew his bus left at 4:00 a.m. and I wondered
>what time he had to get up in order to do this for us.
>
> In the years he came to stay overnight with us there was never a time
>that he did not bring us fish or oysters or vegetables from his garden.
>
> Other times we received packages in the mail, always by special
>delivery; fish and oysters packed in a box of fresh young spinach or kale,
>every leaf carefully washed. Knowing that he must walk three miles to mail
>these, and knowing how little money he had made the gifts doubly precious.
>
> When I received these little remembrances, I often thought of a comment
>our next-door neighbor made after he left that first morning. "Did you keep
>that awful looking man last night? I turned him away! You can lose roomers
>by putting up such people!"
>
> Maybe we did lose roomers once or twice.. But oh! If only they could
>have known him, perhaps their illnesses would have been easier to bear. I
>know our family always will be grateful to have known him; from him we
>learned what it was to accept the bad without complaint and the good with
>gratitude to God.
>
> Recently I was visiting a friend, who has a green-house, as she showed
>me her flowers, we came to the most beautiful one of all, a golden
>chrysanthemum, bursting with blooms. But to my great surprise, it was
>growing in an old dented, rusty bucket. I thought to myself, "If this were
>my plant, I'd put it in the loveliest container I had!"
>
> My friend changed my mind. "I ran short of pots," she explained, "and
>knowing how beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn't mind starting
>out in this old pail. It's just for a little while, till I can put it out in
>the garden."
>
> She must have wondered why I laughed so delightedly, but I was imagining
>just such a scene in heaven.
>
> "Here's an especially beautiful one," God might have said when he came
>to the soul of the sweet old fisherman. "He won't mind starting in this
>small body."
>
> All this happened long ago -- and now, in God's garden, how tall this
>lovely soul must stand.
Thanks Rolex
Lil Stinker
"just havin' fun!"
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