Family Farm Friday #57: Keys

"The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines." ~Charles Kuralt

My parents' neighbor, David, lost his house to a fire last week. We are pretty much fired out around our neighborhood, let me just tell you guys. If you remember after the last fire, I wrote this blog about neighbors coming together.
Well, it happened again. My dad told this story and it just really touched my heart.

After the fire was out, David was standing on the rubble and ash that was his house and all of his belongings looking to see if there was anything he could salvage. Picturing this scene just makes me sick to my stomach.

Then up walked the daughter of another neighbor. She stuck her hand through what was left of the wall in the front of the house. In her hand was the keys to her dad's house that is right down the road. Her dad's house is empty now, as he is living in a nursing home. She gave those keys to David and said, "Here are the keys to Daddy's house. You stay there as long as you need to."

My Dad said it best when he said, "Though I have seen so many acts of kindness in this neighborhood for years, I will never forget what she showed us all today."

People knock on small towns. My "city" friends kid that we just got running water and ask what it was like for me to have indoor plumbing when I moved to my current house. We don't have fancy restaurants. We don't have concerts during the summer. You can't run to the mall on a Saturday afternoon.

But what we have is a community of people who truly love each other and who would give the shirt off their backs (of the keys to their houses) when someone needs help. If you ask me, that's the way it should be. What we do have is worth so much more than what we lack.

By the way, there is a fire fund set up for donations for David (who is one of our volunteer firefighters and who literally lost everything he had) at our hometown bank.

If anyone would like to donate, you can send a check to: David Peacock Fund, Citizen's Bank, 211 E. Main, Tucumcari, NM 88401. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

(If you have any questions about that, shoot me an email at tiffy83@hotmail.com or leave me a comment below.)