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9:50 p.m. - 2006-01-11 Get that can outta my face...but you...with the address labels...you're a different storyI exited the tollway 2 exits early opting to finish my drive down Shoe Factory Road which used to be a country road but is now becoming a major throroughfare due to the farmsteads being torn down, the land shaved of anything living and replaced with putty colored mini mansions. There is an old shoe factory, turned expensive condo lofts at the end of Shoe Factory Road, thus the name, except when you get into Elgin where the shoe factory actually is, it becomes Congdon and is the street I live on. "There will be can collectors on this road someday soon", I thought, thinking again how this once wonderful peice of rural road in between two towns had turned to suburb over night. Earlier that day, I came upon an intersection where people held cans with signs asking for donations for a "family outreach program". The signs were hand written and cans did not have the name of a professional organization on them and I wrote them off as fancy panhandlers doing their days work. I stared strait ahead and ignored them until the light changed. After work, I went to Walmart and at the exit there was a gentleman holding a home made can with "Help a Lukemia Victim" written on it in magic marker. Again, I stared strait ahead and walked right past him. When I arrived home, I set into my routine of sitting at the table and going through the mail. Mike came into the dining room and held up an envelope. "Look" he said, "someone sent me return address stickers and there are a mess of them." I half looked away from the flyer in my hand and said "just throw them in the drawer there with the other ones. Seems more and more organizations are sending them hoping for a donation." That was that last thought I put into the matter. I scooped up the circulars and flyers and shopper papers and book club solicitations and all of the crap mail to put in the recycling bin and with them the envelope the address labels came in. A little slip of paper fell out of the envelope. I picked it up and looked at it. There was a smiling face of a man who was no more than a one armed torso in a wheel chair. Both legs missing and one suit coat sleeve pinned in half. I turned the picture over and it said his name was Jim and after losing everything in Viet Nam, he thought his life was over until the Disabled American Veterans helped him get his life back, with the help of nice people like me. I turned the paper over and looked again at the picture. I owe this man. I owe this man and the hundreds or is it thousands like him that our current war is producing. Two legs and an arm....heck, his life for my freedom and he says I am a nice person. I got out my checkbook. Because of this man and other brave men like him, I can drive down Shoe Factory Road in peace and safety with nothing more to threaten me than a putty colored mini mansion. God Bless America and the men who fight to keep her free. P. I. Yarnsmith
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