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Friendly, friendly And That's What I Like About the SouthBy Rick Horowitz
GREENSBORO, N.C. -- These things can happen anywhere, I tell myself. But they seldom do. Seldom did, that is -- until I came to Carolina, where I was the immediate, innocent target of repeated acts of random kindness. Incident No. 1: It's a sunny Saturday morning, and my flight has just landed at Raleigh-Durham Airport. I've left the cold and gray of the Great Midwest behind for a few days; my luggage has somehow managed to make the trip, too. It slides onto the carousel in no time at all, and the woman at the information desk points me through the terminal doors and toward the rental-car shuttle buses. As I roll my bags along the sidewalk, I see the Avis bus go by. Also Alamo. Also Thrifty. I'm using Budget this time, but I don't see Budget yet. There's a man in a uniform up ahead; he's the driver of the Hertz bus parked at the very front of the line. "Bus for Budget stop here?" I ask him. I figure there are only a few possible responses to this question. He can grunt "Yup." He can grunt "Nope." If he's feeling particularly warm and fuzzy, he can grunt "Nope" and send me in the proper direction. If he's like anyone else who's been asked a perfectly ridiculous question for the umpteenth time, he can cock his head at some sign I've totally failed to notice and mutter, "That's what it says, doesn't it?" He does none of these things. "Going to Budget?" he says. "Hop on -- I'll take you." So I do, and he does. I wonder vaguely as we pull away from the curb whether I'm being kidnapped, whether the honchos at Hertz High Command have suddenly decided to increase their market share by grabbing up customers from the competition, just snatching them off the street and delivering them to a Hertz counter in the middle of nowhere -- no way back, no way out, except in one of their cars. But no -- three or four minutes later, the Hertz driver turns his Hertz bus into the Budget lot and rolls to a stop. He helps me unload my bags, seems genuinely surprised at the tip, wishes me a nice day and drives off into the morning to resume his normal Hertzing. Incident No. 2: I've made it down the road to Greensboro, and I have some quick prep work to do at the nearby Kinko's. I handle the alien computer without a glitch and without running up the bill: Sign on, find the file, print the 19 revised pages, sign off. I handle the computer just fine. I get tripped up by the hole puncher. The individual punchers aren't positioned where they're supposed to be. I hadn't checked; I'd assumed. My 19 pages are ruined. Am I going to have to start all over? The woman behind the register offers to help. She loads my holey original into the copying machine, finds some (properly) pre-drilled paper for the next attempt, tinkers with the paper tray until she gets the holes coming out on the right (which is to say, the left) side -- and then charges me nothing for the extra copies, for the special paper, for her extra work. She's never seen me before in her life. "We'll make believe it didn't happen," she says. Incident No. 3: A Carolina visit without a barbecue stop is hardly a visit at all. There's a Saturday-night crowd at a great local joint, and the waitress is trying to keep up with all the orders. I've devoured my barbecue and my slaw and my hushpuppies, and I've finished things off with a fine piece of peach cobbler. The check comes; the cobbler isn't on there. I catch the waitress and remind her. "You shouldn't have to pay for it," she says. "You had to wait so long." I insist on paying anyhow, but I certainly appreciate the gesture. I've been in the state for less than 12 hours, and I've already collected a year's supply of above and beyond. There's a reason they call it "southern hospitality." Posted 2/8/01. You'll
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Rick Horowitz