JIM HENDRICKS: Wrong turn leads to a good turn

There are few things more unsettling than getting lost after dark in a city you don’t know.

Even in the confines of a car, it’s decidedly uncomfortable. I can remember years ago being in Atlanta with my wife and two young sons in the car. We left a late-ending Braves night game and, as I tend to do when I get inside that city that has spent a good 20 to 25 years since then even further convoluting the roadways, I promptly took a wrong turn.

To this day, I’m not sure where we were as I sat behind the wheel at a lonely red light with no street lights around to speak of, apparently because of construction in the area — construction that was expressly designed, I am sure, to further confuse me the next time I got lost there.

I didn’t see any other cars around.

What I did see besides that stubbornly red traffic light, however, was a squeegee that suddenly appeared on my windshield.

A squeegee is not something you expect to barely see on your windshield at night on a dark street, since I am firmly of the belief that any legitimate squeegee person operates only during daylight hours. I’d like to think the light turned green before I kicked it through the intersection, but all I can really swear to is a great deal of relief once we got to a lighted area and further relief from the knowledge that no squeegee-cleaning persons were injured, other than missing out on a tip, in the production of this column.

As unnerving as that experience was, it would be even more so if you were an 82-year-old woman who was lost at night and driving alone. I imagine it would be downright frightening.

Actually, I don’t have to imagine that. Calena Bennett, 82, of Thomasville, told me was.

She called me out of the blue Tuesday to say she wanted to report some good news about a woman whose name she doesn’t know, but who she describes as her “angel.”

Coming on the heels of the email I got Thanksgiving week from Rebecca Revels, of Gastonia, N.C., whose husband, James, was helped late last month when the long-haul driver ran into a medical crisis in Albany and some good folks helped him get the medical attention he needed and helped keep Mrs. Revels informed until she could get to town, we may be running into a bit of trend here.

If so, it’s a nice trend to experience. Labels like “Good Samaritan” and “angel” are the kind we should aspire to.

Ms. Bennett said she was new to Albany. “I live in Thomasville,” Ms. Bennett said, “and I don’t know very much about Albany.”

As a rule, she said, she seldom drives when it’s not light out.

“I didn’t leave Thomasville in time,” she said. “I let it get dark on me.”

She was looking for a certain street in Albany where she was to stay with a resident here for a while. Unfortunately, she got off the Liberty Expressway on the wrong exit.

“I couldn’t find her house to save my life after I missed that turn,” Ms. Bennett said. “It’s bad to be in a town and you don’t know where you’re at.”

She stopped at a Chinese restaurant off Slappey Boulevard and got directions from a man in the parking lot, but they didn’t clear up her confusion about where she was and how she could get to where she needed to go.

So, she kept on driving.

“I was driving real slow,” Ms. Bennett said. “Almost to a standstill.”

Which is when a car passed by her, then pulled off the road ahead of her. Ms. Bennett pulled her car to the side of the road as well.

The woman driving the car “asked me if I needed some help,” Ms. Bennett said. “I don’t know who she was.” There were others in the woman’s car, too. “They were all so nice,” she said.

Nice enough, in fact, to take the time to lead Ms. Bennett to the house she had been looking for.

It’s funny how when someone we don’t know does us a good turn, we forget to get a name. Ms. Bennett said she hopes the woman will recognize herself in her story.

“Please tell that nice lady thank you,” she said.

And early in our phone conversation, she used a reference we often hear, particularly this time of year, about people who go out of their way to do something nice for someone else, especially a stranger.

“They were,” Ms. Bennett said, “angels.”

The truth is, few of us, if any, in Albany or anywhere else, are worthy to be described as angels.

But it’s reassuring to know that when the need arises, and especially during the Christmas season, we have those among us who, through their actions, truly can be angelic.

Email Jim Hendricks at [email protected].