Neighbors have special quirks

My neighbor, John, hasn't fully entered the 21st Century.

He doesn't have a computer and heats his house with wood. He has a cistern on his farm that collects rainwater and melted snow that he uses for his household water. John seldom uses a telephone. He never calls before he drops by to visit. John will drive 50 miles to give a person a message that he could easily relay over the phone.

He does have a vehicle that he uses for transportation. I don't know what he is driving right now, as he goes through cars and pick-ups quickly. Each vehicle he owns, he purchased used and it always has something wrong with it. His farmyard is filled with cars and trucks of all different makes. John says that he is going to get one or two of them fixed one of these days. I have known John for 25 years and have been through many experiences with him.

One day in the early 1980s, John drove along with four of my children and me when I had to take Tom to the airport at the last minute to fly to Pueblo, Colo. Tom was going to his Grandpa's funeral. The kids were really young and I didn't want to drive home alone. We called John up and he said he would go along to help me out with the kids. When we got to the airport, we asked John to park the car and to meet us at the ticket counter. Tom and I had the kids with us while John parked the car. We waited 45 minutes for John to come back from parking the car. When he finally showed up, we walked up to the metal detectors to go to the departure gates. John stood with his arms crossed as we went through the metal detectors. I told him to follow us and he shook his head and walked away.

"Now what's wrong with him?" I asked.

Tom shrugged his shoulders and said, "Maybe he's afraid of walking through the x-ray machine."

I started to worry as we waited at the gate. Molly was the baby and she wasn't even a month old. Bridget was only 3-years-old and the two older kids were getting hungry. I didn't want to be stranded at the airport with four little kids. I told Tom good-bye and the kids and I left to go and find John. I paged him twice hoping that he was wandering around inside the terminal. Baby Molly was getting hungry and I was breast feeding her and I didn't want to do it in terminal. Finally John came in the door that he had dropped us off at. He was breathing heavily and trying to catch his breath.

"Where have you been? You left me with all these kids," I huffed angrily. "Go and get the car so we can get out of here."

John looked bewildered. My son Danny was 7-years-old at the time and I ordered him to go with John so he would hurry back. I waited another 20 minutes until John and Danny finally drove up with the car. We were driving away from the airport and were a mile away from the main gate when Danny said, "That's where John parked the car."

"You parked way back here?" I asked incredulously.

"I didn't want to pay for parking," John said. "I was picking up aluminum cans as I walked up to the airport the first time. I stuffed my pant's legs and coat pockets full of the cans. I was fixing fence when you asked me to go along with you. I have my fencing tools in my inside pockets along with strands of wire. I also have my big knife because I was using it to skin a rabbit. I didn't know that airports had those metal detectors. That's why I left when you went through them. I ran back to the car to empty my pockets."

That explained his bizarre behavior. I have always thought that it would have been some scene to watch John empty his pockets if he had gone through the metal detectors that day.