I met a rich man today.
He was on the Chicago BNSF (Burlington Northern Sante Fe) #1315 train returning to Aurora. His daughter sat with him, playing with her toys and eating Good and Plenty candies. She had just had her hair done by her older sister so it was braided and covered with blue and white barrettes. He wore baggy clothes and could have used a shave and a haircut. He suggested that she go to the two little girls seated next to them and show them how to play her video game. They shared. They watched each other. They were having a very good time.
The little girl would look up and smile. She shared her toy first with one and then with the other. Those watching the three little girls couldn’t help but smile. A little black child was sharing a seat with two white children and their skin color differences did not matter. I would have loved to have taken their photograph, but decided against asking to do that. After a while, he suggested that she return to sit with him because their stop would be approaching. “Give them a hug good-bye,” he suggested. The little girl gave each of her playmates a hug and with a smile that shined all the way to Texas, then went back to her seat with her daddy.
Because he was seated directly across from me, he looked my way and showed a smile minus both upper and lower front teeth. His daughter clearly adored him.
His clothes were non-descript. His horn-rimmed eye glasses sat crookedly on his face. The left lens was broken in half. He told me in the Winter he made bricks “south of Memphis.” But his wife had had a heart attack last year and died. So his 36 year-old daughter in Aurora suggested that he bring the baby with him and visit her.
“You know I have a 36-year-old daughter and a six-year-old daughter,” he said with smile. “You mean to tell me you haven’t figured out what causes that?” I asked. He slapped his knee and laughed.
“What do you do,” he asked me. “I am a teacher,” I replied. He told me he had lived very close to Gates School and I said I had taught at Gates. That seemed to really impress him because the little girl on his lap had attended Gates School.
I watched his tender embrace of his little girl and her deep smile of a child who knows she is loved. Daughter would not notice missing teeth or a broken eyeglass lens. She wouldn’t notice any external manifestations of rich or poor. His tender caring for her was all that mattered.
He asked the father of the two girls to use his cell phone so he could call his relative in Aurora to let her know to pick them up at 6 p.m. when the train would arrive. The trains that Sunday had all been late due to mechanical reasons the conductor told us. He had her number written in pencil on a torn white scrap of paper. The father of the two girls put in the phone number and handed the cell phone to him. “Hi, Sis, tell them to pick us up at the train station at six o’clock.” He thanked the other father and returned to his seat.
Other passengers could not hold a candle to this simple, honest, rich, man from “south of Memphis” who so loved his daughter and she so loved him.
I said good-bye and wished them good luck. The rich man with no teeth and a broken left eyeglass lens, said the same.