Jesse Lives! - Pg. 4

been commenting on exactly the same thing that led me to notice him. We were both of southern country stock somehow transplanted to the big city and noticeably sticking out. Not only was he one of “my own”; I was one of his. There were few enough of us around that an encounter with another such transplant was, as we would say back home, “a sight for sore eyes”. Now I only had to decide what I thought of that. On one hand, I desperately did want to blend in. On the other hand, I hadn’t, as yet, a clue how to do it. Surely, I thought, this down and out street vendor wasn’t likely to have any useful advice for me.
 
That’s what I thought at the time. In actuality, he had already begun providing me with the best advice possible. I just wasn’t ready to hear it yet.

The next day I tried to whisk past Jesse unnoticed. I rushed down the stairs to the turnstiles only to find that I was out of tokens. I had resigned myself to waiting on line at the token booth when Jesse appeared beside me offering a token. “You’ll miss the next train, Miss Claudie! Here! Someone paid me with a token earlier. You can pay me back tomorrow. Oh! And here’s your Times. See you tomorrow.” He disappeared back up the stairs before I could say anything, which was just as well, because I hadn’t the slightest notion what I would have said.

I was left standing there feeling ashamed of myself. By his unhesitating display of plain old down-home friendly kindness, Jesse had just given me a fine demonstration of what I had to offer New York City. What was so bad, really, about making my first friends among New Yorkers of a similar background, possibly homeless street vendors not excluded? A “real” New Yorker might call that mild insanity, but on that basis, my entire home state might as well be declared insane.