The Pace Of Friendship

Several years ago, to increase sales by getting more people to eat TexMex type food, there was a salsa commercial.  It resembled the eat-beans-and-fart scene in the movie, Blazing Saddles.  Five or six Stetson-wearing good-ole-boys, sitting around a campfire, alternately dipping salsa from a bowl, with tortilla chips.

As the salsa bowl neared empty, one of them commented, “We’re almost out of salsa.  I’ll go get some more from Pecos.”  “No, no, don’t do that!  This here’s PACE salsa, made right here in San Antonio.  Pecos buys salsa that’s made by a company in New York City.”  (All together) NEW YORK CITY??!!

Somewhat more recently, the wife went into La Commida Latina, a small bodega, specializing in south-of-the-border food, to get Ceratex flour to make some Salvadoran pupusas.  Before we got out, she had adventurously purchased a bottle of Goya Salsita Ancho Pepper hot sauce.  She found she loved it, although Shimoniac stays with Rants’ Sriracha, and I like a Chipotle BBQ sauce.

When the bottle ran dry, and we tried to get more, we found several stores which carried the Goya brand, but not the Ancho flavor.  In doing a web search, I found that it is bottled in Secaucus, NJ.  Not exactly New York City, but still a somewhat unusual place to find “Mexican” spices.

Several months ago, I shipped a Loonie and a Twoonie, Canadian one-dollar and two-dollar coins, to Madame Weebles.   She’s a born and bred New York City gal, and proud of it.  She moved over the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey before Chris Christie shut it down.  She says that she crossed the river to pursue employment and a marriage.  Weebs is a sweetie, and a wonderful lady, so I’m ignoring the rumors of villagers with torches and pitchforks.

She lives close enough to Ellis Island to look up Lady Liberty’s skirts.  She asked if there was anything she might do to repay my tiny gift.  I jokingly said that she could drive a few miles over to Secaucus and get me a couple of bottles of the Ancho sauce, but insisted that I could not have her doing my shopping for me.

Imagine my pleasure and surprise, when I recently received an email from her, saying that she had been able to locate two bottles of the sauce, and was sending them to me by mail.   Finding two coins to send to her was as quick as sticking my hand in my pocket, and mailing them almost as easy.

Finding two bottle of hot sauce meant shopping, something I’m not much better at than most guys.  Shipping them meant carefully packing them first, and the cost of the sauce, as well as the freight, was well beyond what I had expended.  I am humbled to receive consideration like that from someone who only knows me long-distance, from reading a few of my posts, and a few of my comments on hers.

Used to years of loner-ship, it was a pleasant startlement to be treated so kindly, by a stranger, who is a stranger no more – and then my received kindness/friendship doubled.

White Lady in the Hood had read my post where I patted myself on the back for donating a couple of coins, and knew that I had not managed to complete my set of the 50 US State quarters.  I take so much US coinage back, on our infrequent visits, that I don’t receive enough in change to find the ones I need.  After over five years, I still needed three.

WLITH now handles the book-store at the elementary school where she works, and sees lots of coinage from kids buying small school supplies.  When I told her that I needed ones from Arkansas, Hawaii and Kansas, she replied within a couple of days, saying that she had the A and K, and had seen H, and would keep an eye out for it again.

Her email request for a mailing address mysteriously fell into the delete file.  I suspect the cats were ordering pizza online again.  Feverishly digging it out before it disappeared into the ether forever, I responded affirmatively, and the two coins have now made their happy way to me.

By the time I published this post; she has also found and mailed the Hawaii quarter – and “something else interesting, just for luck.”  I am excitedly looking forward to it, but I have so much good luck, having friends like this, that I don’t know where I would keep any more.

Having cultivated an almost solitary lifestyle, I am seldom treated badly, but the chubby old word-spewer is seldom treated so well, and by two lovely ladies, nearly simultaneously.  These demonstrations of blogoverse friendship just take my breath away, or maybe it was the second trip downstairs for ice-cream, to celebrate.

Let’s have a round of applause, in appreciation for what these two gals have done for your favorite old Archon.  They are both competent and entertaining writers.  If you haven’t already, click on the links above, and give their sites a visit.

While neither of them is exactly a “stranger”, do any of you have a tale of someone you didn’t really know, who went out of their way to help, or do something nice for you?  Perhaps the “Me” generation hasn’t completely taken over, and there’s still a spirit of goodwill out there.      😀