Driving Al the carney to Amarillo

I'm guilty of looking down on people in a way that I know is wrong. I'm not talking about thinking that someone is an idiot when they have gone out of their way to prove it to you, but in general allowing a faulty perspective to influence the way I view or listen to a person. Take carney's for example. When I go by a carnival I generally hold my children close to me and try not to look any of the carney's directly in the eye. First of all, it's my theory that most people end up working in the carnival because they were lost at carnivals as children, stowed away when the carnival left town, and then just did the only job they knew as they grew up amongst the "Tilt-O-Whirls" and funnel cakes. I have always viewed carny's as hardly even having the capacity to talk to me (me being such a high minded and intelligent being). It's like they are almost invisible people (probably why many of the missing children are never found, because people really don't even see carney's and would never think of one of them as their long lost child). I think most people believe that carny's are born directly of the earth, much like the ogres in the "Lord of the Rings" movies, and therefore most people are in no way compelled to relate to them as humans. Carney's go from town to town, operating the rides and selling the snacks and I've never thought to stop and talk to a carnival worker, and never really desired to either.

My aversion to carney's was suddenly challenged when my good friend Ryan called me up the the other day wondering if I would like to help a guy that needed a ride to Amarillo. Apparently "Al" had come by the church where Ryan works and was needing some help. He and his dog, "Dog", were traveling to California where they would meet up with the carnival and begin thier 8 month tour that they had done for about the last 29 years or so (according to Al). Al's car caught fire in Springfield and he had spent the last 11 days hitchhiking and had finally made it (somehow) to Fairview where he met Ryan. Al told Ryan that he had a friend that was going to meet him in Amarillo to take him the rest of the way so he could make it on time to join the carnival caravan. I only live about 2 hours from Amarillo so Ryan brought Al to Elk City and I took Al and "Dog" the rest of the way to meet thier friend.



Al was a big bearded scruffy looking man, he said he was 39 years old, which meant he joined the carnival when he was 10 (probably got lost). He was a little dirty, but what would you expect from 11 days on the road? He was friendly and so was "Dog". Al said that his dog was a service animal. Not a "seeing eye dog" but a "hearing ear dog" because Al was hard of hearing. Apparently, according to Al, Greyhound doesn't allow "hearing ear dogs", even though he had the "papers" to prove that "Dog" was a legitimate service animal *. This unfortunate circumstance is what forced Al to have to hitchhike from Springfield as opposed to getting on a Greyhound to finish his journey. Al said that he had owned "Dog" since he was a pup, which seemed a bit odd to me because I assumed that a officially recognized "hearing ear dog" would have to come from a training facility where they produce animals that do that sort of thing. On top of that "Dog" didn't really seem to do anything that would indicate that he was helping Al to hear any better, to me "Dog" just seemed like a well behaved black lab. This inconsistency and the fact that Al was a big talker was my first indication (aside from my general wariness of him being a carney) that Al might be prone to certain inconsistencies in lifestyle that would account for his current status in the social hierarchy (nearly deaf hitch-hiking middle aged carney with a dog). It seems to me that people who talk alot are often times trying to take up all the airspace so that you won't have an opportunity to ask any questions that might make it possible for you to get to know them. It's been my experience that these kind of people generally have a low opinion of themselves and have for the most part been surrounded by people throughout their lives who also had low opinions of them.

Now I'm not saying Al isn't a truth teller just because of his dog story or his mere verbosity, there were a few other stories that Al told me that lead me to this conclusion. One story was that Ryan had commented to Al that his habit of smoking was unhealthy and expensive, to which Al replied that he doesn't buy name brand cigarettes, he has a machine that rolls the cigarettes with filters and they only end up costing him like $.40 a pack. "I'd never buy name brand cigarettes" he proudly proclaimed. Now, I know that there are such machines, however Al was telling me this as he opened a brand new pack of Winston cigarettes and lit one up, I didn't bother asking if he also had a machine that made the boxes, bar coded them, and shrink wrapped them in plastic too.

I asked Al a little about his past, where he grew up and all that. He said that his parents were both killed in a car accident when he was 7 months old and he was a ward of the state of Pennsylvania all of his life. He said that he moved from foster home to foster home, most of them abusive. He admitted that he was a trouble making kid that was hard to manage, but he also related that he thought it was wrong that his foster parents were allowed to beat him and his foster siblings. He recalled one story when an old woman neighbor of his called the police to come stop his foster parents from hitting him, he said the police came and were unable to do anything about it. He said that one time he and one of his foster brothers got a shotgun and were going to kill his foster dad, but they chickened out. Later in life, after he got saved, he decided to look his abusive foster family up and paid them a visit. He said that they didn't recognize him and barely remembered him, and he told them that he forgave them for what they did to him. It made me sad to listen to him talk of his childhood, which seemed pretty rough. I don't know how much of what he was saying was true, but I did feel a sense that Al had been kind of discarded by society early on in life. It was interesting that Al on several occasions commented on how great a place Pennsylvania was. For a kid that was raised by the state, it seemed to me that he was bragging on his dad.

Al told me that he was saved when he was 30 and that he spent some time in a pentecostal ministers house while he was a foster kid. This home was a good place according to Al and he told me stories that his foster dad told him about being a missionary over seas. For Al the proof of his own salvation was a feeling he had that Christ was in his heart. Al believed you could lose your salvation (which I argued with him for a while about), and we talked about how works must accompany true salvation. Al agreed and quoted Jesus saying "You can give a man a fish or you can teach him to fish". I don't know where that is in the Bible but maybe it's in an older pentecostal translation. At any rate I could tell that he got the gist of the idea. Al was not afraid to talk about his faith and he had several of his elaborate stories about how he had stood up for his faith in the past. One story involved a woman laughing at him as she left church while he hitchhiked through Lamont, Oklahoma, and one involved the police, IHOP, and an ACLU attorney who was formerly one of Al's foster parents.

When we finally made it to our destination we stopped for some dinner at a Chinese buffet. Al asked me if I noticed the statue of Buddha out front, and wondered if we should say something about it to the owners. He said that generally he would say something, but I said that maybe we should let it slide this time. Al used my cell phone to try to get in touch with his friend that we were meeting, but his friend never answered. One time I heard him talking to someone that he said was his friend's son. I tried the number Al dialed several times but only got the generic voicemail greeting. The Chinese buffet was next door to a church that was having Wednesday night services, Al told me thanks and politely declined my several offers to drive him around town to look for his friend. He got his back pack and dog and said that he would go over to the church and use their phone to get in touch with his friend. I wished him luck and headed home. After about 30 minutes on the road home I dialed the number that Al had been dialing on my phone again, and again there was no answer. I noticed that it was a Pennsylvania number. I wonder if there was really anyone on the other end of the phone for Al? I wonder if he really had a friend waiting for him?

On the trip home I realized that I had a very hard time not seeing Al as one would see a drunk homeless person on the streets. I really don't think he was like that. He was intelligent and articulate, he had email and an XM Radio (but no cell phone). He watched videos on youtube and was into conspiracy theories. He was up on politics (he hated President Bush), and had fairly well informed (albeit very left leaning) opinions on the direction the country ought to take. He even had theology, it was bad theology, but you could tell that he had really considered it with a good amount of thought. In many ways Al wasn't much different than many of my friends, not really that different from me. However because of my own predetermined stereotypes, I had a hard time listening to him.

Have you ever known a person who was physically handicapped in such a way that it slurred their speech or impaired their ability to use their body? Have you ever caught yourself relating to them as if they were less intelligent than you are, even though in many cases they are probably equal to or superior to you in intellect? That's how I was relating to Al, and it was hard to keep my frame of reference from really affecting my overall impression of this man.

I realize that many of my predispositions toward Al were accurate, this fact is apparent simply considering the circumstances surrounding my meeting him. The problem is that I really had a hard time...in fact, I was totally unable to come off my high horse long enough during the 3 or 4 hours that I was with Al to actually try to get to know him. My thoughts were on my good deeds, or on what pearls of wisdom I could offer this poor cretan, or some other self righteous aristocratic separation that I had so happily constructed between myself and Al. I was glad I wasn't Al.

I guess what I learned from Al is that I don't really care about people the way I should. Al was a person, he had flaws and some of them were pretty big. But he was searching for meaning and happiness just like the rest of us are. I think it's funny that I somehow thought myself better than Al because he was hitch hiking, or because he was a carney, or even because he was a big story teller. It's sad because it really kept me from getting to know him. My own arrogance kept me from really getting out of this experience what was there to get. I got home feeling glad that I was able to help someone out, but somehow feeling like I had really missed the point of the whole situation. If I want to reach people for Christ I can see now that I really have to get beyond this arrogance and be able to connect with people without putting up pretenses of superiority or false humility.

I can't imagine what it would be like to be Al. I don't think there is a circumstance where I would find myself having to hitch-hike to anywhere, except maybe the nearest phone. Considering Al's past and the situation he was in, I can imagine how some of his big stories might help him get through the day. I really hope that Al has a good relationship with Christ and that over time Jesus will help him to live more fully outside his tall tales. And at the same time I hope that Christ will help me to be able to love people better and see through the stories and the chit chat to the person and make the most of the opportunities God gives me to get to know other people.

The next time you go to the carnival, look the carney in the eye and give him a smile. Ask him how he's doing and mean it, take the time to listen to his answer. Let him tell you a story, tell him about Jesus. Maybe he is just lost and doing the only thing he knows how to do, maybe someone just needs to look at him and recognize him for the lost child of God that he is...serving up funnel cakes and running the "Tilt-O-Whirl" for all the Christians as they politely ignore him. That would be Al.

* (from greyhound's website): No dogs, cats, birds, or other animals will be transported. However, a service animal, trained for the purpose of accompanying a disabled person, will be permitted to travel with the disabled person at no additional charge.