The Poor You Will Have With You Always

I've been thinking about those words lately. One of the troubling things about this job and lifestyle of being on the road all the time, and traveling to so many diverse places, is that you come across so many people who seem to make their living by begging. Some of them are obvious con artists, like the guy I have run across three different times now, over a period of about a year, at the same truck stop who has curiously stuck with the same introductory line about his car being just down the road with a flat tire, and his hungry wife and kids are in it waiting for him to scrounge up the money for a tire so they can finally get home. The first time I encountered him he sounded so sincere that I gave him five bucks, which seriously was all the cash I had on hand. He then got indignant with me and wanted to know if I had a credit card, because there was an ATM inside the building that I could get some more cash with. He assured me that five bucks wouldn't help him get a tire!

Then there is the extremely convincing fellow that has given me the same story twice in a three month period, with real tears, at the Pilot in Danbury TN. He starts off by assuring me that he is not a bum, and that he is completely embarrassed to be asking for help, but... and off he goes on a strange tale of his wife dying of cancer and he's trying to get home to see her before she passes, but he has locked his keys in his eighteen wheeler and he just needs a little cash so he can call a locksmith... I mean this guy has even gone to the trouble to buy and wear a “Blue Tooth” headset so that he actually appears to be a trucker! Yes, he even has “props” to support his bizarre tale. It is hardly believable though when he told you the same story just two months ago!

I promise you that I could go broke if I tried to help everybody that requests money of me at the truck stops. It is a constant barrage of sad pitiful stories that begin to have a hardening effect on you because you simply cannot discern anymore who is sincerely in need, and who is just honing their art of an age old practice of finagling money from the kind and generous, yet hard working folks who go to work everyday for an honest living.

Recently a man came right up to my truck as I was parking after a long day of working and jumped right into his “story” about needing a little help. I basically interrupted him and told him that I was sorry, but I just couldn't help him. He thanked me, and I went inside the building and bought myself a barbecue chicken dinner. As a Christian, I think it right and good to help the poor, and to be quite honest with you it almost always troubles me when I flatly refuse someone like I did with this fellow. It was bothering me the way I had refused to help him, so I went ahead and ordered two of the barbecue chicken dinners and promptly walked outside to give him a decent meal. I figured if I gave him a meal, then I know what the money was used for, and I'm not helping him buy drugs, which of course is probably what has brought him to such a low and desperate state of having to beg for his next fix. And I was correct – he was indifferent to the meal as he took it from my hand, but then he began to insist that it was money that he needed, because he needed to fix a flat on his car. We were standing by his car which clearly had all four tires with air in them!

Last week I stopped in Florida at a truck stop that was near a Cracker Barrel restaurant. As I walked over to the restaurant to get a meal, a young girl in her early twenties with a small baby on her hip and a tattered diaper bag hanging off her shoulder asked me if I could spare some change. I begin to despise myself for refusing all these folks, but it is so frustrating to know that I am probably helping keep them in bondage to drugs if I give them money! I'm trying to eat my meal in the Cracker Barrel, but getting sick to my stomach form the images in my mind of the young girl and her little baby over there in the truck stop parking lot asking others for help. I decide I will go back and offer to buy her a meal if she is hungry. When I go back she is gone. I can't decide if I'm relieved she's gone, or more troubled because now I'm wondering what became of her.

I'm starting to think I am a big sucker – someone once said I had a “kind face.” Is that face of mine a magnet for liars and cheats, or does it attract people who see in it someone who is willing to help them out if they need it? I don't know anymore, but it sure is a frustrating dilemma.