I am a real, honest to goodness, action hero.

          I am in college in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1976. I am twenty years old and married. My life is school, work and church. I want to spend time with my wife, but that isn’t always possible. We have rent and utilities to pay, groceries to buy, a car to keep up and school bills. Marsha is working at a Revco drugstore in Cleveland, Tennessee and it makes sense for me to get a job in that town, too.

          I am hired at McCoy, Inc, an auto parts store that has been there forever. The big draw for me is that if I work here, I can get the parts I need to keep my piece of junk on the road. And they will schedule me around school and church. And they will pay me $2.50 an hour. As it turns out, I work fifty hours a week. Thirty six hours during the week and fourteen on Saturday. I am young. I am strong. I am exhausted.

          I am also extremely disliked by our biggest customer. Mr. Cordin. About six foot six and close to three hundred and fifty pounds. He owns the John Deere dealership in town and, this being farm country, he is a pretty big deal. He also owns seven dirt track stock cars that he races on Friday and Saturday nights. Well, he doesn’t race them. He hires mechanics for the dealership who can race the cars. To satisfy his needs we have to carry parts for nearly every tractor ever built as well as parts for his cars. His dislike for me is two-fold; I talk like a $%@# Yankee and I go to college. He will come in and make a big deal about having something hard and he needs to talk to the college boy. First he wants a lower radiator hose for a VW Beetle. Next he wants some little obscure valve for a 1939 tractor. Next he comes in and makes up a non-existent tractor that he needs a non-existent part for. He does everything he can do to make it hard for me. The owner tells me that if I ever get lippy with Mr. Cordin, I will be fired. It is hard because I really do not like him at all.

           I am the guy who opens up on Saturday and I am the guy who locks up. Saturdays are always killers because when I get there, there are ten to twenty guys already there to get parts for their race cars that they broke the night before. Everybody is already angry because they have to do this and it makes life difficult. Mr. Cordin is here every Saturday morning. All the other men defer to him. He gets to go first. After all, he owns the John Deere dealership and most of these guys owe him money.

          I am ready for him this Saturday. I have prayed about it. He is grumpier than usual, but I ignore that. He has a two page list and I jump right into it. With race cars you can’t just look up a differential for the 1961 Chevy it is going into. It likely has a Ford differential. Most times, only the shell is identifiable, the rest of the car is all mix and match. However, I actually enjoy that. Makes it interesting. I soon have everything on the counter and I am ready to ring it up when Mr. Cordin reaches into a bag and pulls out a broken motor mount. “College boy, Ah don’t think you’s can find this here mount. Ah’s a coming with you to match it up.” By sight I thought I recognized it, So, I invite him to come along. It will be sweet to walk right to the box and pull it out.

          I am a little nervous, though. The part of the rack that holds the motor mounts faces the old wooden shelves that hold all the batteries. And there are a lot of batteries. We don’t carry just for cars and pick-ups. No sir. We carry for tractor trailers, we carry deep wells for boats, we carry all kinds of batteries for various pieces of farm equipment. The whole wall is shelving for batteries, floor to ceiling. Old wooden shelving bolted to the wall, which is an outside wall. When someone needs a battery that is at the top, we climb a tall ladder to get to the top and then carry a heavy battery down. I have always had a fear of heights anyway, but here I can imagine that top shelf breaking and batteries raining down.

          I am thinking this while I am getting down to get the mount out. What I don’t know is that Mr. McCoy’s (the owner) son’s wife has just whipped into the parking lot. She does our books and she is very angry that she has to work Saturday to do end of the month. She’s driving too fast and when she goes to slam on the brakes she just pushes the accelerator to the floor. She is going into her parking space, which happens to be on the other side of the battery wall. When she hits the gas she accelerates right into the wall.

          I am kneeling on the floor, reaching a mount up to Mr. Cordin to match, when I hear the crash. Instantly, I am on the move, coming up from the kneeling position. Mr. Cordin is right in front of me. Big man. My shoulder buries into his stomach and he doubles over me. By the time we are at the end of the aisle, batteries are smashing down behind us right where we had been. Some are bursting open, spewing acid everywhere. Finally, with Mr. Corbin’s bulk on me, I go down. We hit the floor (no acid there, yet) and slide into the racks holding exhaust pipes. I give Mr. Cordin a hand up and we go down several aisles and then head to the front, where everyone is exiting the building.

          I am bending over and retching. So is everyone else. The vapors from the acid have gotten to everyone. Except Mr. Cordin. I had knocked the air out of him and now he was just trying to get his lungs to work. But when he does get the lungs working, he comes to me and stands me straight up. “Boy, you saved me! You saved my life! You saved me!” I try to tell him that he was just in my way, which is the truth. But he isn’t buying it. After that, he brings me a bag of White Castle hamburgers whenever he comes in.  

          I am an action hero.

          I am also a literary hero. I wrote that whole thing in present tense, which is hard to do. I also started every paragraph with ‘I am.’ Also very hard to do. Just did that for a hoot.

          But accidently saving Mr. Cordin’s life does not make me a hero. Seriously, if I had been facing the other way, Mr. Cordin would have died then and there. As it is, I remember it as a funny story. And it explains why I can’t stand White Castle now. But there was nothing heroic about it.

          I got word this week that Jim Wilson, a friend, has died. He owned a string of gas stations and was quite wealthy. He didn’t accept Christ until he was in his 50s, but he spent the last twenty years making up for time lost. To me, he was a hero. Martha Chamberlain will not be remembered much beyond the boundaries of Urbana. But her gentle spirit and steadfast faith made her stand out. Church seemed better when she was there. To me, she was a hero. After forty six years in the ministry I have been blessed to encounter many such heroes. I hold all of them close in my heart. Some people go their whole lives wanting to meet a sports hero or a music hero or whatever, never realizing that there are heroes close by.

          Which brings the thought. YOU can be a hero to someone. Just let the Lord lead. Be His instrument.

          Blessings.