Charles Dunagin: Still some good guys on the highway
Posted: 09/04/08 - 11:39:44 am CDT
There are still good Samaritans around as I was reminded a week ago today.
My wife Virgie and I were on the way to Oxford Thursday morning for a weekend football game and also to visit the family of my old friend S. Gale Denley who was in intensive care at the hospital in Oxford.
Thanks to some help along the way, we made it to our destination in time to pay our respects to the Denleys before Gale died from complications of kidney disease several hours later.
We had decided to go up on Thursday rather than our usual Friday routine during Ole Miss football weekends because I had a meeting to attend in Jackson that morning.
Before noon we were north of Jackson on Interstate 55 when our left rear tire blew out near Gluckstadt.
I had taken off my coat and tie, but the woolen trousers and long sleeved dress shirt weren’t exactly suited to outdoor work in the mid-day August sun. Moreover, the car trunk was full of stuff we were taking to Oxford which had to be unloaded before I could get to that complicated tire-changing equipment and donut spare tire in a compartment on the very bottom.
I was trying to decide whether to give up and telephone for help or read the instruction manuel when an 18-wheeler pulled off the highway ahead of our car.
A tall, muscular young man who looked like he could play defensive end for the New Orleans Saints got out of the rig, handed Virgie and me each a bottle of water and asked if he could help.
Within 15 minutes, Frederick Gunner, who drives for Swift Transportation out of Oklahoma City, had the tire changed and cautioned me not to drive more than 50 miles an hour on the donut and to get it replaced as soon as possible. I already knew that but appreciated the advice anyway.
When I offered to pay him for his time and trouble, he refused, saying he might need some help someday. I insisted on buying his dinner that night — he was bound for Memphis — and he finally took the $20 bill I shoved at him and thanked me. The thanks was due him.
We limped on to Canton on the donut. The first place I saw that might sell tires was Watson Quality Ford near the Interstate.
Although we were driving a General Motors car, the service department fixed us up with a set of replacement tires, at a reasonable cost, although they had to send to Jackson to get them.
Oh, yes, I replaced all four of the original tires which, although they still had good tread, were three years old with more than 60,000 miles on them.
Columnist Sid Salter wrote about Gale Denley on this page Wednesday, but let me add a personal recollection.
Gale and I became friends when we were classmates at Ole Miss in the 1950s, and we have shared a lot of interests for more than half a century, primarily journalism, politics and family, two of his children being about the same age as ours.As a journalism professor at Ole Miss, he mentored my daughter Kathy when she was editor of the student newspaper there.
Gale, throughout his life, had the ability to communicate with and relate to people of any age, and he had a dry wit about him that I always enjoyed.
In the 1960s, during the hippie movement when certain rebellious young folks were growing beards and long hair, I invited Gale to speak to the McComb Rotary Club.
During the talk he observed that he wasn’t too concerned about the long hair and beards that were alarming some of us, noting that pictures of his great-grandfather reveal that he, too, had a beard and long hair and that was a hundred years ago.
“And all he did was fight the United States government,” Denley quipped, referring, of course to the Civil War.
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