While merrily cruising southward on Idaho's SR 51 south of Grasmere, I passed this man, who was standing behind his car, looking at something in his hands. At first I thought nothing of it and let the Green Weenie's cruise control propel me onward. Gradually the sight of him, all alone out in the middle of nowhere, with little traffic, got to me. I turned around and drove back to the gravel turn-out where he was still standing behind his car, engrossed in something.

He had a flat tire and was trying to figure out how to get his car jack to work. The instructions with the jack were pathetic. The jack had to be unfolded or some such thing, but neither of us could figure out how to do it. Finally I offered the use of my jack and tire iron.

In the picture, his car is jacked up with my jack (barely visible in the shadow) and he is preparing to tighten the tire nuts of his temporary spare tire. Once the nuts were tight, we chatted for a few minutes, revealing bits and pieces about ourselves. He was a Shoshone-Paiute Indian who had recently retired from the highway department that maintained this road, among others. He was not as "alone" as I had pictured him, as he had already been in touch with someone on his cell phone. If I had not stopped to help, he still would have been all right, but he would have spent more time here.

It occurred to me that this was a good time to get the opinion of an Indian about an Indian-related subject, so I asked him why some Indians accumulated junk in their yards. (Pardon my stereotyped image.) He said it had to do with two things: the belief that the things might come in handy one day, and the association of the things with the memory of the persons who once owned them. Both reasons made sense to me: I am a certified pack rat and I get nostalgic about things.

He had stuff to do and I had miles to cover, so we packed our stuff away and bid each other farewell. He headed north and I south.