Two guys and a little red truck(from my journal 09-20-05)

I had the privilege the other day to have the top to my jeep off. If you have never experienced this you really should. It's almost feels like you are flying. Granted, I have never flown (like superman) but if I had, I am sure it would have felt very similar to riding in my jeep with the top down. Anyhow, I was driving and I noticed a truck to my left. For the record, I am very much a people watcher, not stalker, just watcher. People are just very intriguing to me! This truck caught my eye, no that anything was exceptional about the truck, it was a red, ordinary, compact, pickup truck. I like so many other people, have the predisposition to look into the next car whenever I pull beside one. So I looked over into this little red truck and I am quite intrigued by what I see. I don't know if most people would have been as intrigued as I was, but I was very intrigued. In the little red truck I saw a driver and a passenger, not that out of the ordinary I know. The driver was a white male, around the age of 70, I would guess. The passenger was a black male around the age of 70. My interest was peaked by these two men. I did not know where they were coming from, but I did know that seeing them together in that little red truck made me very happy. I think this had such a profound affect on me because it is not something I see everyday. Yes I see older white males and older black males, but rarely, very rarely do I ever see them together. It was pretty stinkin' cool to see them together. It reminded me that things can and do get better. These two men, who were raised in a time of high racial tension, found some way to look past the outside appearance, to the heart of each other. What they found was something that transcends color, they found a person. I wondered what their story was, I wondered how they became friends, I wondered how they got past their social do's and don'ts. To say that I was intrigued would be a major understatement. I was floored, in a time where segregation and racism reigned supreme, these two gentleman were able to look past all of that. Even today at times we can feel the ugly head of bigotry rising up ,but these two fellas, reminded me that there is hope. Hope that we can look past a person's outside appearance and not just see a color, or money, but their heart and see them for who they really are. Hope that what our fore fathers wrote about, can be a reality in our day and time. Yes, a fleeting moment in traffic became a lot more, it became an ah ha moment. A moment where I realized that I am a part of the change I desire to see in the world and so are those two gentleman. What a very important lesson learned from two guys in a little red truck...