samaritizing

Driving from Boulder to Estes Park one late night in June with an electrical storm lighting up the sky to the South I encountered a man named Russel Sutherland who said with a wonder in his voice, "So samaritizing still exists."

I wound through the little town of Lyons and was headed up the hill out of town in a mood to drive slowly, content to listen to paranoid talk radio and watch for animals moving across the road bed, sort of lulled by the warm cab and talk radio. Soon after beginning the ascent I found myself on the bumper of an old truck fitted with a ladder rack and a pile of assorted junk in the bed including a plastic dog kennel and a propane tank wedged against the tail-gate. I noticed that his lights were out and he was rapidly slowing on the incline.

I rolled down my window and asked if he needed a lift. He pushed his metal cased window down with his right hand with a great flurry and didn't answer my offer but instead verbalized what he thought was going wrong with the truck - this automatic, long-bed, '69 Chevy, with paint decay that revealed weathered layers of paint and primer all the way down to the reddish stained metal.