My wife Sheila belongs to a group called Transition Vashon. The purpose of Transition Vashon is to prepare us for the day we run out of oil and can no longer drive everywhere we want to go. Transition Vashon meets twice a month in our living room. The Transition members drive to the meeting, each in his or her own car, which is OK since we haven’t run out of fuel yet, but it seemed to us somewhat contradictory, like flying to a conference on global warming and depleting the ozone with carbon emissions to get there.
So, as an experiment, Sheila and I decided to leave our car (a Toyota Prius, which gets a sanctimonious 50 miles to the gallon) in the driveway and take a bus to see a film at our local movie house. We walked out the driveway and down to the bus stop near the high school on Vashon Highway.
We live between the school and the Blue Heron. A friend had given us a King County Metro schedule for the 116, 118 and 119. The bus driver told us the printed schedules had become a rare and highly valued possession. Sheila clutched the orange and white schedule to her bosom like it was the Dead Sea Scrolls. Perhaps this paucity of printed schedules explained why we were the only two people on the bus. The price for two seniors was 75 cents each — probably more than the price of gas I would have used driving the 50-miles-to-the-gallon Prius to the theater. But we were using public transportation, which was the purpose of this exercise.
After a pleasant chat with the driver, the 119 dropped us off right across the street from the movie. So far, so good. But the invaluable Metro schedule alerted us to the grim fact that we would have almost an hour wait for the return bus back to our home after the movie let out. Ever resourceful, the audacious elders decided to hitchhike back home. To this end, I printed up a cardboard sign, which read in thick grease pencil NEED RIDE TO THE BLUE HERON. I thought the sign showed brevity worthy of a former headline writer for United Press International, although Sheila pointed out that I had misspelled “heron” on my first attempt. Everyone needs editing.
While waiting in the popcorn line with my sign partially visible under my arm, not one, not two, but three different Islanders offered to give us a ride home. Mind you, we hadn’t even gotten to the highway at this point. This outpouring of generosity reminded me of a rainy night when I drove into a ditch in front of the Lutheran church, and before I could make my way out of my partially capsized car, a half dozen drivers offered to give me a ride home or call a tow truck on their cell phones. I had to choose which Good Samaritan I would let rescue me.
The winner in the popcorn line was an enthusiastic woman named Louise Olsen. We selected her when another woman driver apologetically told us she had only one empty seat in her car and a tall man with a kind face, wearing a fedora at a rakish angle, arrived seconds after we’d said yes to Louise. No hurt feelings, but I forgot to offer popcorn to the runners up. Louise told us to meet her in the lobby after the film, which we did.
On the drive home, we discovered that our benefactor lived the opposite direction of our house. Ruefully, we wondered how many actual carbon emissions were eliminated that night. But Louise was happy to help. “Ba shert,” she said, explaining that it was Yiddish for “it is right that this should happen.” Indeed.
— Brian Brown, a retired editor and publicist from Time Magazine, often walks to the Roasterie, where he writes and reads.
