Today I got a sad phone call.
It was from the wife of my gardener...the man that mows my lawn, trims my hedges, pulls my weeds, edges the lawn, turns the soil, fertilizes the yards, fixes the sprinklers and will bring in my trash cans from the curb on trash day. He is a friendly guy that really likes to chat with me about anything and everything when he catches me coming or going. He works hard and has been hit even harder by the economy. We can see it from our window...he doesn't use a trailer to tow his equipment anymore. His truck is a smaller, older model. He no longer has help but does it all himself. All of his equipment is now secondhand. Well, as it turns out that last one, the secondhand equipment, is for a rather awful reason. Some men stole his good stuff...right out of the back of his truck while he was mowing the side yard of a client. What is wrong with people. Manny is a really nice guy. He is always offering to help with anything he can see that needs to be done. He is just like everyone else, just trying to keep his head above water and the wolves at bay.
But that is not what the phone call was about. The phone call that I got today was from his wife calling to tell me in a broken voice that he would not be here today to cut my grass, he was in the ICU. My first thought was that this has all caught up to him and he had a heart attack. But she explained that he had an accident on Monday. Well, being the concerned person (or nosy) that I am, I asked for more specifics. This is where it truly gets horrific. This is where I lost my composure. I lost my faith in human nature!
It seems that while he was on a job this past Monday, some men came along and stole some of his equipment from the back of his truck...AGAIN. This time he saw it happening and approached the truck to talk to them. He must have put his hand on the door frame in some way because he was holding onto the truck when the driver accelerated and drove away. The driver dragged him down the road! Dragged a man down the road just to steal his lawn equipment! It still makes me cry to imagine the scene. Manny came through this with broken ribs, a broken clavicle and a removed spleen. He remains in the ICU for now and is awake. This is all that I got from his wife, whom I do not know. All she wanted to let me know was that he wouldn't be able to cut my lawn today.
What I want to know is what kind of lowlife drags a man for a weedwacker? I am hurting for this family. So, if you can take a moment to say a quick prayer for Manny and his family. They are going to have a rough road ahead of them. He will lose so much income while he is in the hospital and during his recovery. I hope that in the end of this tragic story there will be some sort of goodness.
