Random Acts of Kindness: Home for the holidays by planes, trains and automobiles, Part 3

A photo of a black woman and her young daughter. The young daughter holds a license plate and smiles at the camera. Both are standing in front of a car which sits in a parking lot in front of an intersection.
Valerie’s daughter, and granddaughter, with the car Williams gave them. The license plate has been blurred for privacy. Photo Courtesy of Wendell Williams

PREVIOUSLY: A series of random acts of kindness led Wendell to take his first flight to visit colleges like Oberlin and to not settle for his future. Then, through a similar serendipitous sequence of events, he ended up on the same train as Jeri Davis, a woman that would become his mentor, inspire him to achieve sobriety, and enlist him in “the war for America’s behavioral health…”

Like most boomers, I caught the car bug when I was heading towards puberty. My dad used to take us to Vista Raceway in PG County. It was a fast and loud dirt track for motorcycle racing. We’d stay all day Sunday from time trials to finals and would come home covered in red dust. My mom would throw a fit because we had school the next day and she’d have to get four boys cleaned up. We had a wringer washer, so washing our clothes was a challenge. Who reading this is old enough to remember those and the labor involved?

As the 50s rolled around, America was smitten with the hot rod craze, based on a lot of car and motorcycle films such as “Easy Rider,” “Across the Macon County Line,” and the street-racing classic “Two Lane Blacktop.” I was no exception. I remember my father’s friend, Mr. Gordon, had a souped-up ‘54 Mercury with glasspack mufflers and rear fender skirts to die for. It was loud as hell but had that sound guys loved.

Later, the movie “American Graffiti” perfectly chronicled this period and the relationship between young people and cars. Any car for a teenager meant independence and made any average guy popular with the girls. But a hot rod made you cool. I drove for the first time at 13 when my brother’s friend let me learn on a private road. I knew then that, once I could drive legally, having brothers meant just getting the family car for a few hours would be a challenge. Plus, that three-seat station wagon was in no way cool. Lucky for me, the owner of the corner gas station a block from my house, Jack, decided in a random act of kindness to take a chance on a 15-year-old. The job he gave me as a “grease monkey” apprentice allowed me to start saving for my first car.

The gas station was the base garage for a group of young street racers that included Jack’s sons, who became my friends. A steady stream of hot cars pulling in and out of the garage made work feel like a custom car show. I got to hang out with local street racing legends and my goal quickly became to join them. It took a year, but I got my wish.

Through random acts of kindness by the gas station owner and the Selective Service board, I was given the opportunity to step right into the racing circle when Jack’s youngest son Ronnie was drafted and his ‘65 Valiant with the high-performance package set idle. Jack decided to let me layaway my first car with weekly payments. Like Tom Cruise said in “Top Gun,” I had the need for speed.

I soon lived and breathed cars and hung out at the local speed shops, which are a thing of the past. I was at Big Ed’s Speed Shop in Alexandria so much that I was used in several ads for speed parts. I spent every dime I got on a monster engine build to get ready for the big-time street-racing scene. What I didn’t count on was who would drive it. I learned the hard way that I wasn’t ready. It was a full race car on the street and I lacked the experience to handle a machine like that. But my ego got in the way.

One night, showing off, I tested the limits of my car and it’s brute power. It scared the living $#@+ out of me and things went sideways, literally. I hit six cars with no insurance. (Back then it was optional.) My racing career was over, but my love of cars endured. The times were changing anyway: girls seemed to be moving away from “gearheads” as they went off to college.

A friend who stayed home to go to Howard turned me on to campus life where the VW Beetle was king. Girls seemed to love the Bug and it wasn’t fast. Folks were seeing how many people you could stuff in one Beetle (The answer is 11) and playing jokes by picking up the little cars and putting them where they didn’t belong.

In an unexpected random act of kindness during the summer of ‘70, my friend Buster decided to help me try to win my girl back by giving me his ‘63 Bug when he bought a ‘65 Karmann Ghia. The catch, he warned, was the Bug was stuck in second gear. My sweetheart was working a summer government job and I still laugh thinking about picking her up each day and on occasional dates with one gear and no reverse.

Years later, I was studying at D.C. Teacher’s College when a white ‘65 MGB showed up out of nowhere at the neighborhood used car lot. I had to have it. But how would I get the princely sum of $250? Mom listened to my pitch and agreed to co-sign a loan, partly to help me build credit so I could move out because my family didn’t play the failure to launch game. Thanks to another random act of kindness, l had a $32-a-month car note and my first credit purchase. I was thinking this would increase my popularity and my chances of impressing that girl.

None of my gearhead friends were impressed at first, but soon one also picked up an MGB, then another brought an Austin Healey 3000, and suddenly sport cars had arrived in my hood. Other people followed our lead but I had the first one in my circle and I threw myself into making it the coolest. I bought all the aftermarket products available to make it go faster. Then,l one day while riding around Adams Morgan, I saw an open garage door and noticed a gem under all the junk inside: a rare MGB GT. I parked and saw the owner of the house, who said he was just moving in and was cleaning up the garage and throwing everything out. He said a relative had stored the car there and never come back for it. One thing led to another and, in a random act of kindness, this stranger sold me a classic for $100. I went right to work making the GT the baddest thing, transferring the entire hopped-up power plant I had added to my ‘65.

For nearly a decade, I drove a Porsche 911. And to this day, I’ve always said if I hit the mega lottery I’d hire a trainer, lose 95 lbs (because I couldn’t fit in one right now) and buy a 911. Unfortunately, not only did I never hit the Mega Million, but I found myself down and out many times in my life’s twists and turns. I struggled with transportation and could no longer afford any car, period.

Yet through another random act of kindness, my old friend, mentor, and master mechanic Roberto in Takoma Park, who I met in 1972, got me back on the road. When he saw me clean, he smiled, walked me around the side of his lot, and “sold” me a lime green diesel VW Rabbit for $20! It was the first car I had had in years, followed later by others, as I worked to rebound from my many issues. I still take my car to Roberto’s shop today, now run by his son, who is like a brother to me. He does honest business with truth and compassion, just like his late dad.

Starting with Buster’s random act of giving me that VW long ago, I’ve received so much help with transportation. I’ve gotten cars from various nonprofits and individuals free, plus more “sweetheart deals” like Roberto’s than I can list, always right when I needed them.

At one point, I got the fever again to go fast and answered a Washington Post ad to test drive a VW Rabbit GTI. I knew I couldn’t afford it, but I went to suburban Baltimore to take a look-see. I just wanted to dream a little. When I got there with my recovery-house roommate, I started to feel bad about that. But it was a Friday night and the owner just gave me the keys and said, “Take it for a spin.”

That GTI was fun, everything I heard about them was true. I thanked the owner earnestly when I gave him back the keys, but I also felt the need to apologize. “Sorry to waste your time but I can’t afford your car.”

At that point, he shared a glance with his wife and said to me, “let’s talk,” as if we were just a few dollars apart. We sat and he asked me about my life. I was very open about my substance use and road to recovery. He turned and smiled at his wife before sharing that they too were recovering. “Just make an offer,” they encouraged me. I apologized again, saying truthfully “This is all I have.” But they said in unison, “We’ll take it.” So in a random act of kindness by a kind young couple, I rode off into the night in a flaming red GTI and fed my need for speed. And would you believe that 25 years after this, a second couple in recovery gave me a car?

In 1991 I helped create six recovery houses for homeless recovering men and women. I became frustrated with not getting the partnership I’d been promised and deserved. I got a call from my mom saying a guy from a radio station was trying to reach me. I loaded up what I was now calling “The Little Hoss” and in two days was off to Detroit for my third act in broadcasting. Then, in the span of a weekend, my life did a 180 through a new set of unpredictable automobile adventures. The GTI was stolen from in front of my building and never found. I didn’t have full coverage, so I was without a car right as my life began to spiral out of control in the harsh winter of Michigan with a job dependent on having transportation.

Years passed and I found myself challenged again and again with transportation concerns of my own making. As I moved towards many horrible bottoms getting and keeping cars became problematic. I’d pick myself up but kept screwing up. Yet, somehow, the random acts of automobile kindness did not slow down.

One really sticks out. In 1985, my longtime friend “Chill” drove his ‘75 super Beetle to Norfolk, Virginia, gave me the keys, and turned right around the same afternoon and jumped on the Greyhound back to D.C. “Keep it as long as you need,” he said. He had heard that I was about to lose another radio job after new station owners cancelled my car deal and left me without transportation. Chill also happens to be who introduced me to my love and lifelong friend Valerie in the early 70s, may she rest in peace. He and l are still friends today — he never sold his stock in me, even when it seemingly had no value. He still has that Beetle and every once in a while we go out to his garage and move the junk from around it to have a look at it and talk about our past. For decades we’ve said we’ve planned to restore it to give away.

Most recently, because of my sweet brother who I almost never talk to, I was able to switch rolls and perform the first of what I hope will be a string of random automobile acts of kindness to help others. He gave me a clean low-mileage car not knowing that I had one. The first thing I thought was to give back and give it away to someone who needed it. It’s said that charity starts at home, so I re-gifted it to Valerie’s daughter to help in her transition to being independent after her mother’s passing.

Home it’s said is where your heart is. I hope we all get home for the holidays whether by Planes, Trains or Automobiles.


Issues |Art|Lifestyle

information about New Signature, a Washington DC tech solutions and consulting firm

Advertisement

email updates

We believe ending homelessness begins with listening to the stories of those who have experienced it.

Subscribe

RELATED CONTENT