Hostages in America

Yesterday evening, I noticed that the household was in need of a few grocery items, and so I decided to drive down to the supermarket to buy them. On the way out the back door, I noticed a large plastic trash bag full of empty pop cans and plastic bottles waiting to be taken to the store for recycling. Even though I don’t drink pop or beer, it seems that I’m always the one who takes the bottles in. I don’t mind doing it, since in Oregon it’s 5 cents deposit each that I can use as pocket money or, as in this case, helps me out with the grocery bill.

I got to the store and luckily, the recycling area was nearly deserted—just a young store clerk fiddling around with one of the machines, and an older fellow standing by with a small sack of recyclables, waiting for the machine to be re-set.

I looked into the top of my bag, tearing apart the handles so I could get a better look. Hmm, mostly cans but quite a few plastic bottles on top. The “cans only” machine was available, so I walked over to it and started loading cans, one at a time, into the chute. As I came upon a pop bottle, I carefully laid it down on the sidewalk, using my right foot as a bumper to keep them from rolling down the slight incline to the street.

After I had about five bottles laid out on the ground, I felt a little nudge as I was loading another can into the chute. I looked over my shoulder, and there was the older chap I’d noticed as I walked up, pushing an empty grocery cart to me. He looked at me with a soft stare, and I nodded back and smiled, grabbed the cart and pulled it closer. Then I bent down to pick up the bottles off the sidewalk and drop them into the cart. There was quite a lot of cans and bottles in my bag, as it turned out, about four dollars’ worth, and about a dozen or more were bottles.

After the last can was recycled and I took my receipt, I quickly unloaded the bottles into the machine next one over, and noticed that my benefactor was still patiently waiting for the youth to untangle whatever was wrong with the machine he wanted to use. I took the receipt for the bottles and then turned to him and said, “Thanks for the cart.” With a shy smile he responded, “Don’t mention it.”

My entire time with this fellow lasted only a few seconds in two exchanges. I’ve trained myself to look deeply, and in those brief moments had a “handshake that goes to the heart” experience. He was probably a few years older than me, was dressed in clean, plain clothes and wore a baseball cap. He resembled my old elder Philip Holte a lot, so I guessed he was probably a Scandinavian—he had the same soft, serious look in his eyes, with a hint of a twinkle.

Along with the empty shopping cart, something else was passed to me. It was a furtive acknowledgment that our interaction was something contraband, helping a stranger for no other reason than “if I can lend a hand, I will,” a vestige of a vanished era, when such kindnesses were commonplace, where good deeds were done unselfconsciously and unselfishly. “Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”

Forgive me, brothers, but I felt at that moment, and still feel now, as if my friend and I were hostages in America, prisoners of the new age in a land ravaged by lust. These thoughts weighed heavy on me, who had just returned from living in Japan for two weeks. The America where I was born, I experienced it again for a few moments of time… but, where did it go?

“Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.” (Matthew 24:12-13 NIV)