The Mysterious Ways of Hamilton County, FL

Last week I had the pleasure of accompanying the senior class on their senior trip. We went to Disney and Cocoa Beach. There is so much to tell that I shall probably fail to tell much of it. I will start the story in reverse.

The plan was to return to Atlanta from Cocoa Beach on Saturday morning, as Baccalaureate was to be early Sunday afternoon. We left, promptly and exhausted, at 8 am from the resort with high hopes of being home by late afternoon. We stopped for yet another fast food lunch in Gainesville. I wistfully shared my hope with my tablemates for some home cooking. We left lunch and told ourselves that maybe we could make it back without another stop.

Sometime after lunch I noticed the driver get on his phone as the bus began to lose speed. Suddenly, he pulled over and stopped the bus. It was overheating. We unloaded the bus into a small clearing at the bottom of the embankment and began to try to figure out what to do.

We were stranded there for a while. Some students threw a football, some played cards, and the rest stood around and tried not to complain. Eventually, our bus driver informed us that he had called 911. The 911 dispatcher had put him into contact with the county sheriff. The county sheriff happened to be at a community emancipation day celebration at a local school facility. The county commission and the county school administration hosted the celebration. The county promptly promised to take care of us and sent out a bus.

After a bit of driving around and plan changes, the bus took us to the community celebration. We met all of the county leadership. A team of sheriffs went out to our dead bus to retrieve the rest of our luggage. The school cafeteria, which was trying to figure out what to do with all of the leftover food, fed us a wonderful second lunch of excellent barbecue chicken, some kind of southern rice dish (it was white rice with heavy doses of pepper and hard-boiled egg yolk), collard greens, and shortcake. I got my home cooking. Our boys and girls (all white) played some pick-up games of basketball with the local kids (all black). We hung out in a small courtyard shaded by a large oak draped with Spanish moss. When our new bus proved to be several hours a way, we sent a group to the store to get a few snacks and drinks. The county picked up the tab for us.

If nothing else had an impact on our students on this trip, I hope our brief sojourn (six to seven hours) in Hamilton County will be remembered by them. Our group of affluent, white kids who had been spoiled on a six day vacation, was taken in and shown love and true southern hospitality by a small, poor community that most of our group would probably never willingly spend time in. I felt more welcome and taken care of by the people of Hamilton County than I had by anyone at Disney or the resort. They did it all for free and with no thought of reward for themselves. The entire episode still seems slightly unreal. This is the second time in a short period that I have been the recipient of an unexpected kindness. It is good to see such people still at work in the world.

When we first arrived at the celebration, one of the county commissioners greeted us with a big grin, a hearty handshake, and the comment, "the Lord works in mysterious ways." Indeed.




Peace