Can a hug and a sandwich change the world?

“I’m going to tell you something.
I’ve made it a point to stop; to let people in traffic merge.
You have to try to do good things.
You have to try to make things work.”

Let’s talk about change.
That friend I told you about who was dismissed from jury duty…
His name is Curtis Strother.
The advice about being courteous while driving, that was his.
A remarkably simple sentiment from a remarkable man.
A man orphaned at four, who raised himself.
Parentless and homeless…

He told me there were two things that changed his life.
You already know about one of them.
The lady who gave him the sandwich.
The other was a hug.

While talking with him he told me, “There was no adult. My older brother, who was there, wasn’t capable. He never went to school. He just drinked. He didn’t have the capacity to do anything.
No adults reached out, ever.
There were no relatives.
No one checked on us.
We was just left alone.
We kept finding these abandoned places (to sleep).
One time, we found a place that was six dollars a month.
We didn’t stay, because we couldn’t find the money to pay the rent.”

I asked him, “Did people know you lived under that house?”
“Yeah, people knew we were under there.
We never bothered anybody.
We was good kids.
I was the only one who would stay (under the house all the time).
My brother wouldn’t stay because he was afraid of the dark.
We had a kerosene lamp. We would buy some coloil.”
“What’s coloil?” I asked.
“It’s c-o-a-l o-i-l .
We didn’t know how to say nothin, so we’d say, ‘Give me 15 cent of coloil.’
I lived like that for fifteen years.”

“How did you get food?” I asked.
“Do you know what a Piggly Wiggly is… a grocery store in Mississippi? We would go to the Piggly Wiggly after it closed and we would dig through the stuff they threw out.
We’d wash it off, there was good stuff in there.”
“Did you get sick?”
“I got sick from eating some bad meat.
One time I got some spoiled ham. I’ve never eaten meat again.
People think it’s something else, but that’s the reason I’m a vegetarian.
We used to pick blackberries by the buckets.
White people would buy them from us.
Pecans grew everywhere. We’d climb up the trees and we’d shake them.
Then we’d race to see who could pick them up the fastest.
We’d put them in old croger sacks.”
“What’s a croger sack?” I asked.
“It was a brown fine mesh sack they used for cotton and flour. It came up to our hip.”
“How much would you sell a bag for?”
“Fifteen cents. Sometimes I’d only get a nickel. It was all about making some money to get something to eat.”

“What did you do if you got sick?” I asked.
“We had remedies for everything.
I remember one time I got a deep cut above my left eye. My mom stuffed spider webs deep into the cut.
Caster oil and turpentine cured everything.”
“What do you mean? You’d drink turpentine?!”
Laughing, he said, “Yeah, it cured everything.”

At this point, I feel like I’m in the ring with Ali himself.
These bewildering blows to my consciousness keep coming.

I asked with trepidation, “What was it like under the house?”
“When it rained, the mud would run through the back of the house (we slept under).
It was rough.
The rats would eat up our food.
We would find linoleum (for flooring).
I would clean.
I did the best I could.
I would find furniture.
I found a head board with wooden drawers and I’d store food in there. The  rats would chew threw the wooden drawers while I was sleeping, though.
Yeah, it was bad.
We was poor, real poor.”

“Because I could sing, people loved to be around us. We had so much talent.
I could play guitar.
People were attracted to us.
People would come to our place to hear me sing.
I would draw a crowd of people under the house.
People would fall asleep listenin’ to me sing.
When mornin’ came, I’d crawl over all those people.
I was the only person that would get up and go to school.
Something in me always told me not to give up.”

“That is where the lady with the sandwich came in.

Mississippi was sweltering with racism. That’s where you would get hung and no one would know nothin’ about it.
It was bad!
There wasn’t a day that I wasn’t chased!
I’d get off the bus and I had to run for my life from a truck load of white folk screamin’ ‘nigger nigger!’ Mississippi was a bad place.
People ask, ‘Don’t you hate white people? Don’t you hate the fact that they took your land and your house? They lynched your daddy! They stole everything from you!’
Every time I think of that time, I think of that lady with the sandwich.
Even in Mississippi, with all that hate, that woman refused to be mean.
I’m sure no one knew she gave me the sandwich.
It would have been dangerous for her too.
They would hang ya just for lookin’ at a white woman.”
He told me about a sandwich wrapped carefully in clean paper that she cut into four triangles. Each piece had a tooth pick topped with tinsel.
He said, “I’d never seen a sandwich cut like that.
I felt rich.
There was people that were put in my life at the right time.
You can’t tell me there isn’t a god. He was always their for me.”

“What was school like?” I asked.
“I’d sit in the back and try not to be noticed. I wouldn’t speak up.
I always knew the answer.
One time I got a literature assignment. The teacher said, ‘You all read this story and tell me what you read.’”
Like it was the most obvious thing, he said, “We didn’t have lights under the house so I stopped on the side of the road (so he could read in the light of the day). There was a outline of a lady in the book that looked like my mom.
That’s why I read it.
I was compelled to read it!

Those fast ass girls…”
“What’s a fast ass girl?” I asked.
“In other words, they was fast. They came from well to do families. They was rich and cute and they would put their hand on their hip, ya know. They was fast. They knew things and tried to upstage you every chance they get. I was innocent still. The girls would say, ‘When you get down there, don’t get too confused. Ya know you want some of this, but you’re to poor to get it.’ They got all the answers to all the question and they couldn’t wait to show how much they know.

That day no one raised their hand.
I was really taken that nobody answered that question.
That was really significant.
That was God giving me an opportunity.
I was… I was a super insecure kid. So I just barely raised my hand. ‘Curtis, did you read it? Come up here.’ the teacher said.
Tim, I think I recited the book word for word.
The teacher said, ‘I always knew you had it in you.’
Then she hugged me.
Tim, that was the first hug I’d had since my mother had died.”

The first hug he’d had in eight years.
Eight years!
He was twelve. His mother (and father) died when he was four.
He said, “Somethin’ you need to understand. I didn’t look good. I didn’t have no clean clothes. I had no shoes. I was probably a bit smelly.
She saw through that…
Never underestimate the value of a kid. They understand more than you’d ever think.
From that day forward, I got straight A’s.
That moment changed my life.”

Now Curtis is changing my life.
Is he changing yours?

Change happens in the most unlikely and subtle ways.
Every hug and smile.
Every kind gesture.
They all change the world.

The power of one…