I look forward during this move to a day with no emergencies or anxiety. This day had all the hallmarks of being such a day until a little after 4 p.m., when we found ourselves stranded in Decatur. But that’s the end of the story.
The story begins at Fernbank Natural History Museum where Benton, M-M, and I drove a little after 11 p.m. We spent hours in the place, going carefully through each exhibit and watching the IMAX movie about coral reefs. Throughout the exhibits, I was reminded again and again of the interconnectedness of all life on earth and of the importance of the most insignificant creatures.
I remember sitting in Kings Daughter’s Hospital in Temple, Texas, a couple of years ago while Tom was having knee surgery. The hospital has hosts and hostesses who welcome visitors to the waiting room, and the hostess this day was a woman in her sixties with teased hair and carefully applied makeup. She struck up a conversation with a young couple in the waiting room and somehow the conversation turned toward endangered species. The possible sighting of an Ivory-billed woodpecker was in the news, and this woman voiced very loudly her opinion that she didn’t understand all the fuss about a little old bird. What was one little bird?
I thought of this woman as we went through the exhibits at Fernbank and as we watched the film on the possible extinction of coral reefs within the next thirty years. At the glass case of Gila Monsters in the Lizards and Snakes Alive exhibit, the accompanying display panels claimed that Gila Monsters have provided researchers with information that can help diabetics. Gila Monsters go a long time between meals, but when they do eat, “a substance in [their] saliva helps [their] systems adjust to the sudden rush of sugars and nutrients. Drug researchers have copied that protein to help treat diabetes in humans.”
Studies of Fence Lizards have also revealed information that can help humans: “When ticks that transmit Lyme disease feed on Fence Lizards, a protein in the lizard’s blood kills the Lyme bacteria. If that tick then bites a human, the human won’t get sick.”
Science and research provide us with information such as this, and yet many people just don’t realize the importance of basic research and of one little bird or one little lizard or one little insignificant plant. They are like that woman sitting in the waiting room of Kings Daughter’s Hospital, making fun of people who mourn the loss of a species or of the degradation of a watershed or habitat.
The IMAX movie on coral reefs illustrated how we are part of—not separate from—nature and how we depend upon other creatures for our survival. The warming of global waters is threatening coral reefs which provide food for millions of people and which help dissipate the force of violent waters for those who live on sea shores. The film described one place in the Fuji Islands where a coral reef was dying. The smaller fish that feed the larger fish that feed people no longer had a habitat, a habitat that was destroyed by two degrees of warming, by deforestation which caused silt to muddy waters that needed to be clear for the coral to grow, and by over-fishing by foreigners.
Having gutted the Environmental Protection Agency in favor of business, the leaders of our current government don’t understand this kind of interconnectedness—or maybe they just don’t give a damn, just like the woman puzzled and dismissive of the possible sighting of the long-thought-extinct Lord God Bird.
Today’s experiences not only reminded me of how we depend upon other creatures but also how much we depend upon one another and how we are connected in surprising ways. Benton, M-M, and I drove to the post office in Decatur after 4 p.m., and when I turned the key to start the car and head back to our apartment in Atlanta, the engine didn’t even turn over. Dead. Nothing. So I went back into the post office to borrow the Yellow Pages in order to call a tow service. Tom was in Killeen, giving tips to the successor to his old job, so he wasn’t available to give us back-up support.
Flipping through the Yellow Pages, I looked for wrecker services in the Decatur area. One service had a recorded message that directed the caller: “If you need the towing service, hang up and call again. Otherwise, leave a message.” Hanging up and calling again, however, elicited the same recorded message. The number of another local towing service had been disconnected. Someone answering the phone at a third towing service said he had a bad leg and wasn’t taking any work for the next two weeks, but he gave me the number of some other guy—who I didn’t call. Instead, I called another business listed in the Yellow Pages. The receptionist said that she needed a destination to which the car was to be towed. I hadn’t figured the destination yet. And the tow truck wouldn’t arrive for another hour to ninety minutes.
I called our real estate agent to see if she could recommend a wrecker service, but she didn’t know of any, either, perhaps never having had the wonderful experience of requiring such service.
The post office parking lot, completely full when we arrived, had emptied of cars. The post office personnel were closing and locking their office doors. And then a Good Samaritan drove up, an insurance salesman who lives in Atlanta but works in Decatur. He asked us if we needed help, and I asked him if he could recommend a local auto repair shop to identify as a destination to the tow truck driver who might be showing up in an hour-and-a-half. Gary Lobby, as he identified himself, did better than that. He called up the owner of Medlock Marathon on Scott Boulevard, who arrived about twenty minutes later to jump start the Honda and to lead us to the service station where his son Eddie provided us with a new battery.
While waiting for the repairs to be completed, Randy, the owner of the station, and I talked and discovered some possible family connections. His wife is from Louisiana, and her father was a Cole. “Hey,” I said, surprised. “My grandmother was a Cole, and her father’s family had migrated to Texas from Louisiana.” Randy himself was from Kentucky, but he had ancestral connections to Opelousas, Louisiana, where Tom’s ancestor Seth Lewis had been a judge in the 1800s. Then he mentioned a family connection to Rob Roy [MacGregor], whom Tom's mother had often mentioned as being an ancestor of her family, the Robbs.
We’re all connected in sometimes unexpected ways.
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