For Wilshire Baptist Church
Ken knows tires, but more important, he knows people.
Ken is a manager at the Firestone near my parents’ house. I went there on a recent evening to fix a slow tire leak and check out a few other things on my mother’s SUV. We were taking turns staying with my father in hospice care and I stole away for what turned out to be a couple of hours. I’d called ahead and Ken said they could do the work before closing time, but the line for service was long so I’d better get over there.
As I sat in the service waiting area, numb and tired from a two-week roller coaster ride with my father through the health care system, I began to take interest in the stories that were unfolding around me. First, a man of perhaps 35 came in with his young son for an unknown maintenance issue. When he handed over the keys, he told Ken to call him when it was time to pull his car into the garage for service.
“I have one of those breathalyzers on it and only I can start it,” he explained.
Mercy, I thought, that’s a big burden for such a young father, regardless of how he put himself in that situation. Ken understood and made no big deal about it. He also realized the man’s young son would be bored with the home renovation show on the television, so he handed the remote to him and coached him up into the 200 channels where the cartoons were until the boy found the show he wanted.
“Oh, you like ‘Big City Greens,’” Ken said, and the boy grinned. Ken helped him turn his chair so he could get a better view.
As time went on, I watched Ken juggle the phone, make trips to the garage, and answer questions from walk-ins. I listened as he talked a man through a choice for a new set of tires, quoting chapter and verse on options. His advice was both technical and practical. He wasn’t going to sell him something he didn’t need or want.
As the clock ticked closer to closing time, the phone rang more frequently, and I listened as Ken explained that there wasn’t enough time today and that tomorrow would work better. You could sense the frantic frenzy on the other end of the line, but Ken kept his calm and his cool as he talked each customer through their decisions.
I almost laughed out loud as I heard one side of a conversation with Ken telling a caller, “No, a tow truck will probably cost you a hundred dollars . . . no, I’m sorry we can’t come get you . . . no, we’re closing soon . . . yes, putting the spare tire on would be a great idea right now.” His eye caught mine and he winked as he hung up the phone.
I wish broken people were that easy to fix. I wish that every ill and hurt and breakdown could be mended as easily as patching a flat tire, but it can’t be. We are “fearfully and wonderfully made,” as it says in the Psalms, and that means we are complex beings and quite often God is the only one who can mend what he has made. And sometimes . . . well, the mending is done in another time and place.
Meanwhile, kindness can go a long way toward soothing the pain. Ken was applying that principle at the Firestone, and back at the hospice center, the doctors and nurses were doing the same. The time watching Ken had calmed my anxiety about being away from Dad for so long on such a seemingly trivial errand as patching a tire. But then I remembered that I was just doing what Dad would have been doing for my mother – making sure her car was safe to drive.
As Ken checked me out and handed me the keys, a peloton of cyclists rolled out from the Bike Mart next door for an evening ride. Life goes on.