On my other blog, I linked to the parent post, but this comment reminded me of how true this is.

Next time you’re traveling and see someone stopped to help someone that has broken down by the road, if the break-down isn’t with the vehicle of a pretty girl, pay attention to who has stopped to help. It won’t be a late model Mercedes, Beemer or Cadillac driven by someone well dressed that’s stopped to lend assistance. It will be someone working class, or poor. Almost always.

One time I lost control a little on the ice in NC and not wanting to crash into oncoming traffic, I took it off the road. No real danger, but it would not move after that. Completely stuck in the thick mud-ice crappiness that NC gets a lot.

This was before cell phones were common, and I was looking at the car pondering what to do. Not a lot of options. Long way to walk back to civilization in the bitter cold.

Then out of the darkness comes this ratty-ass pickup that looked like it had been through an apocalypse. Guy pulls up beside me, wearing clothes and a hat that looked like they might’ve been new in 1975, and said, “Need some help, padnuh?” in a thick Appalachian accent.

He then spent 30 minutes of his time in the hellish cold pulling me out of the muck and asks for nothing in return for it at all. One of the nicest guys I’ve ever met, and just judging by external appearances (which isn’t always accurate, but in this case, probably was) probably never cleared more than 15K in a year.

If you think this has no veracity, where do you think you’d most likely get help if you broke down in an old car:

1) In or near a gated community in an upscale neighborhood.

2) In a poor or lower-middle-class neighborhood.

Well, in America at least, you’d likely get arrested in scenario 1, and almost certainly would if you were to make the mistake of being black or Hispanic. So I guess at least you wouldn’t have to worry about your broken car anymore.