This memoir is about when I helped ensure that a man was able to maintain his dignity in a time of crisis and how it unexpectedly enriched my life. Most names and locations have been changed to shield an identity.

The image at left is a poster for The Thin Man from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios.

On the day I started my new job with the City of Denton, I noticed a look of anxious recognition from a lean man in the adjoining ready room for the utility meter readers. He thought he knew me, I guessed, but I couldn’t place him. After a polite greeting to everyone in the room, I went on into the Data Processing Department.

For the next month, the slim meter reader eyed me with nervous apprehension. Though puzzled by his behavior, I tried to remain amicable. Out of caution, I also kept myself a little distant. This was a drama I didn’t fully understand.

One morning the man, taut with intent, blocked my path to the computer room.

“Were you a friend of Rick Hansen on Bryan Street?” he asked.

“Still am,” I replied.

“I thought I recognized you.” He paused. “You ever . . . ?”

He let the question hang.

In that lull, I recalled who he was. “No,” I said.

The tension in his face relaxed into a gentle grin. Without a word, he gave me a firm nod that indicated gratitude and respect as he stepped aside to let me pass.

About five years earlier, I filled in as a helper to my buddy Rick as he framed a new house. After work one day, we were attempting to recover from our labors and a summer sun that seemed to fill the entire sky. There was no cloud cover, no wind, and no reason to do anything but sprawl in the path of a window fan.

Too tired to talk, we cranked up Fleetwood Mac on the stereo.

There we lay until the sound of a family dispute from next door drifted in over the music. We looked at each other and shrugged. A hot day, a small house, kids out of school, these things were bound to happen.

The crying and yelling grew louder and louder. Then quiet.

Rick looked at me with concern in his eyes. At that moment, a barefoot boy in faded red shorts and a threadbare t-shirt burst through the screen door, tears streaming down his anguished face.

“Rick! Daddy’s got a gun. Says he’s gonna kill his self!

We hopped to our feet and bolted out of the room, following the speedy little kid across the yard. He stopped next to tiny girl outside his home and pointed at the open front door.

Rick darted through the door first with me tight on his tail. The living room was empty, so my friend forged straight ahead toward the kitchen, then stopped. I veered into the bedroom off to the right.

Dead ahead of me, in front of a dresser, a scrawny white man with a bright red face held a hunting rifle to his neck. A woman in a worn-out calico dress stood next to the bed, fluttering her hands in frantic desperation.

Without breaking stride, I grabbed the barrel with both hands, yanking it away from the man’s head. In the next instant, Rick took us all to the floor.

Writhing on the floor, spittle shooting from his mouth, the man howled: “Why’d you do this?”

Rick, stronger than the agitated man and I put together, jumped to his feet as he wrested the rifle from between us. “What the hell is going on here?” he bellowed.

“Oh, Ricky, thank you,” said the woman through her tears. She then tapped me gently on the back. “Please don’t hurt him.”

Dazed by the impact and struggle, her touch reminded me I still had the forlorn man pinned to the ground. He went limp and just lay there weeping as I stood up.

The distraught woman gave me a hug. She felt sticky with sweat and worry.

“Lost his job. Nobody’s hiring,” she moaned, “We’re behind on everything.”

Rick kneeled on the floor next to the despondent fellow, who looked up at him and whimpered, “I can’t provide for my family.”

It was the saddest sentence I’d ever heard.

Rick pulled the exhausted man to his feet, saying “It’s gonna be all right. Gonna be all right.”

The poor guy fell sobbing into his wife’s embrace.

I saw tears sliding down my friend’s tanned face as the room became blurry for me, too.

Embarrassed by this intimate moment, Rick and I began to make our exit. As we eased around the couple’s two small, blond children crying in the doorway to the bedroom, the man, his eyes still round and red with desperation, begged us to not tell anybody. 

“If you do, I’ll never be able to hold a job again.”

Over the next few days, Rick and I collected donations from our circle of students, musicians, craftsmen, and the owner of our favorite watering hole. All were financially strained, but generous. We gathered enough to keep the distressed family in food and utilities for another couple of months.

It was difficult, as these donors were our very best friends, and lovers, but we did not mention the attempted suicide. 

Rick also spoke with their mutual landlord about cutting these people a little slack. His landlord, who turned out to be the sweet old guy with a great garden at the end of the lane, agreed to help.

My friend’s neighbors thanked him for the intervention and assistance, but afterward, they kept to themselves. Rick was disappointed that they barely spoke to him for the rest of the time they lived next door.

I think he understood. Maybe I did, too.

A week after I assured the skinny meter reader that his former troubles remained in the past, he marched into the computer room. He appeared more confident, maybe a little pleased with himself.

Presenting me a blue, kraft paper folder with pockets, he said, “You will love this!”

Inside one sleeve were several promotional pictures cut out of a newsprint magazine for a movie called The Thin Man. The other opening held two audio cassettes containing the soundtrack to the film. He recorded them, with commercials mostly cut out, from the Sunday afternoon movie on television.

I guess I looked a little confused, so he repeated himself: “Trust me, you will love this.”

He was right. Listening to it that night, I was quickly taken in by the fast, funny patter from William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles. As a fan of detective novels from G. K. Chesterton to Dashiell Hammett, the film’s intricate plot and Nick’s orchestration of the end game intrigued me.

When video rental stores began popping up after a few years, I bought a small TV and a VHS player. Finally, I could see the movie in its silvery perfection!

In short order, this gentleman’s remarkable gift enriched my life even more as I discovered the rest of the Thin Man series and explored other vintage cinema. Over time, these old films began to provide me a breather from a troubling world as well as a way to understand it.

Turner Classic Movies appeared on cable television a decade later. When I discovered it: absolute heaven!

Even today, when I watch one of these old movies, I am reminded of how little effort it can take to help someone in crisis; a moment of unthinking kindness, a lifetime of thoughtful discretion.