Samaritan at work

Twelve or thirteen to five (not to be confused with "25 or 6 to 4"). The usual traffic snarl at Pennsylvania and the Northwest Distressway. A battered old station wagon starts the left turn onto northbound Penn, and gets three, four feet before it dies. A couple of horns, but not the cacophony you might expect. Two guys get out of the beater and start pushing it across the intersection. Eventually the left-turn signal goes red, and the driver caught by the light, a fellow in a white trucklike object, flashes his hazards, gets out of his vehicle, runs up to the wagon and provides some much-needed push power; the wagon, in a few seconds, is clear of the intersection.

No real place to go from that point, and my light (to southbound Penn) was turning; I'm assuming he got back to his truck, and the fellows with the wagon managed to make it to a Penn Square entrance.

There are parts of the world, we are led to believe — as the news guys say, if it bleeds, it leads — where this sort of situation would have turned out badly. With Thanksgiving coming up, I'd like to express some gratitude for the fact that I don't live there.

Posted at 5:21 PM to City Scene