One unfortunate incident can set the tone for a bad day, but
as I witnessed last weekend, sometimes one good deed can turn things around.
The Mountaineer Relay for Life team has been committed to
being more hands on with our fundraising efforts this year. With guidance from
our team captain Rick Bohleber, we came up with some great fundraisers that are
also symbolic of this year’s theme, “Celebrating the Courage to fight.”
Lifestyles Editor Rachel Robles led the charge on a grapple-thon
and self-defense class to be taught by her jujitsu dojo. First-time fundraisers
are scary because you never know whether your handwork and planning will pay
off, but it was a success! We raised more than $600 in a matter of two hours
— completely worth it.
Then we decided we’d do a car smash fundraiser because
Rachel had an old car sitting in her driveway just waiting to be destroyed.
Everything else just fell in place — the American Legion let us use their
parking lot, tow trucks volunteered to deliver the car and clean up the mess,
we got the sledgehammers, the safety glasses and everything else we needed.
I can’t tell you how much fun we had spray-painting that car
in all Relay purple pride. Saturday arrived and with beautiful weather and
plenty of foot traffic downtown, it was a sure thing. But it wasn’t. For all
the time we put into planning and executing, we only had a few people wanting
to hit the car for a small donation.
Maybe we shouldn’t have done it while students were still on
spring break or maybe we could have advertised it better or maybe we should
have found a more prominent location, but it didn’t matter by then. I don’t
like losing and this was a major loss in my eyes. I was grumpy and I could feel
my skin scorching in the sun as we tried our best to get people to stop, but
all we got were strange looks.
We ended up smashing most of the car by ourselves. Our
reporter Shelby Harrell failed to put on gloves and got a piece of glass stuck
in her finger so I sent her home to clean it. It was down to Rachel and her
husband Robbie, a teacher at Tuscola, Tuscola student Austin Cowan and me.
As we stood there wondering how much more damage we could do
to this poor car, we noticed a groundhog running from the woods behind the
American Legion toward the woods on the other side of Legion Drive.
“Awe… look how cute,” I said.
But then it became clear to all of us watching that this
groundhog was about to meet its untimely death. A car was driving past just as
the groundhog darted into the road. With that helpless feeling in our gut, we
watched as the groundhog became road kill.
That was it! This was a terrible, horrible, no good, very
bad day and there was no way to salvage it. We began cleaning up, and Rachel
and Robbie left. Austin and I watched cars swerve around the groundhog while
waiting for the tow truck to haul off our decimated car.
Then we noticed a truck stop in front of the groundhog. A
man got out and casually walked over to the animal, picked it up by it’s tail
and delivered it to the grassy knoll on the side of the road. He got back in
his truck and continued on, waving to us as he drove past. But it wasn’t until he
drove by that I noticed who it was — Rep. Joe Sam Queen of Waynesville.
The running joke is that Rep. Queen is everywhere. You see him walking at
MedWest Fitness Center, you see him calling the square dances on Main Street,
you see him leading parades and kissing babies at the March for Dimes event —
and there he was again clearing the roadway when he thought no one was looking.
It was enough to redeem my day of disappointment. Thank you
Joe Sam for being there.
