USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving.
Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free.
I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these."
"They just come with the table, man."
They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner.
This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat.
I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared.
"Did we…?"
"Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless."
Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined.
My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude."
Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man.
I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy.
Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived.
I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most.
Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.
@brianonorio@dogwoodblooms I got a text from @bowsavage said "the makers of the original pink hotdog have just acquired Neese’s country sausage. Jesse jones now owns Neese’s. Little “pank” hotdogs for everyone!"
i’m so mad at fifa for banning tailgates at the world cup. these euro tourists would’ve lovedddd getting free hotdogs and beers shoved into their hands by an overweight dad named bob
The man at the hardware store called me "boss."
I do not work there. I want to be clear about that from the beginning, because of what followed.
I had only asked where the nails were. He pointed and said, "aisle six, boss."
Boss.
I stood very still. A title is not given lightly. In my country, to be named the head of a house is a ceremony that takes a full day and three witnesses. This man had done it in half a second, over nails, and walked away.
But done is done. I had been appointed. I would not dishonor the appointment.
So I assumed my duties.
I began arriving early. I learned where everything was. When a customer looked lost, I guided them, because a boss does not abandon his people. When two boxes fell, I restacked them. When a child cried, I gave the child a small respectful nod, and the child stopped, because authority comforts.
A real employee found me straightening the paint cans. He asked what I was doing. I told him, simply, "my job."
He called his manager. The manager arrived. I bowed and prepared to receive my first performance review.
The manager said, "Sir, you can't be back here."
I understood. A new boss must earn trust. I accepted the demotion with grace. I returned to the floor and continued serving the people, now from a humbler station, which only deepened my resolve.
By closing time I had helped forty customers, reunited a man with the correct drill bit, and been thanked, by name, as "boss," four more times.
Four more appointments. I now hold five titles at a store that does not employ me.
A weaker man might find this confusing.
I find it an honor I never asked for, and cannot return, so I have simply decided to be worthy of it.
The manager walked me out gently and said, "have a good one, chief."
Chief.
I stopped at the door.
That is a promotion.
So I will be back tomorrow. Earlier. There is clearly a path here for a man willing to work, and I intend to climb it, one kind stranger's word at a time, until I have earned every title this generous country keeps handing me for free.
I do not know what I am the boss of.
But I will protect it with my life.
Kurt, puts me in mind of a non-PC joke.
A Mexican says to a Texan "I hate you. You stole our land!".
The Texan says "Pardner, that was a long time ago, and you've got lots of equal land."
The Mexican says "Yeah, but you stole the part with the power lines and good roads".
w.
@EchoesofWarYT These stories give me hope. And make me immensely proud of how our country was born.
When I die, I’m going to find this man and thank him myself. God willing.
I live a few miles from the Jack Jouett House in Woodford County, KY. All of the schoolchildren in the area learn about Jouett, but he definitely deserves far more recognition for his feat! There actually was a poem written about him, but it’s not quite as catchy as “Paul Revere’s Ride”:
Hearken good people: awhile abide
And hear of stout Jack Jouett’s ride;
How he rushed his steed, nor stopped nor stayed
Till he warned the people of Tarleton's raid.
The moment his warning note was rehearsed
The State Assembly was quickly dispersed.
In their haste to escape, they did not stop
Until they had crossed the mountain top.
And upon the other side come down.
To resume their sessions in Staunton Town.
His parting steed he spurred,
In haste to carry the warning
To that greatest statesman of any age,
The Immortal Monticello Sage.
Here goes to thee, Jack Jouett!
Lord keep thy memory green;
You made the greatest ride, sir,
That ever yet was seen.
On this night in 1781, one man on a horse saved the American Revolution from losing Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and half of Virginia's government in a single morning.
You were never taught his name.
June 3, 1781. The British had chased Virginia's entire government out of Richmond. Jefferson, in his final days as governor, and the legislature had fled to Charlottesville, thinking they were safe in the foothills.
They were wrong.
That evening, 26 year old militia captain Jack Jouett was at a tavern in Louisa County when roughly 250 of the most feared cavalry in the British army came pounding down the road. Their commander: Banastre Tarleton, nicknamed "The Butcher," the man whose dragoons had cut down surrendering Americans at Waxhaws.
There was only one place they could be going. Charlottesville. 40 miles away. And the capture of Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, would be the prize of the war.
Jouett couldn't outrun them on the main road. So he didn't use it.
He swung onto overgrown backwoods trails and the abandoned Old Mountain Road, riding 40 miles through the dark with only the full moon for light. Legend says low hanging branches whipped and scarred his face for life.
Tarleton stopped his men for a 3 hour rest. Jouett never stopped.
Before sunrise on June 4, he came up the mountain to Monticello and woke Jefferson. Then he rode down into Charlottesville and warned the legislature.
Jefferson got out with minutes to spare. British dragoons were coming up his mountain as he left. The legislature escaped over the Blue Ridge to Staunton. Tarleton caught only seven stragglers, one of them a frontiersman serving in the legislature named Daniel Boone.
Paul Revere rode about 12 miles in 1775 and got captured before reaching Concord. Longfellow wrote him a poem and made him immortal.
Jack Jouett rode 40 miles, lost nothing, saved everything, and got a thank you gift of two pistols and a sword from the Virginia Assembly.
No poem. No fame. Almost no memory.