Net Miles Of Smiles

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The Rented Room
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Our house was directly across the street from the clinic
entrance of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. We lived
downstairs and rented the upstairs rooms to outpatients at the
clinic.

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One summer evening as I was fixing supper, there was a knock at
the door. I opened it to see a truly awful looking man.

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“Why, he’s hardly taller than my eight-year-old,” I thought as I
stared at the stooped, shriveled body. But the appalling thing
was his face, lopsided from swelling, red and raw.

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Yet his voice was pleasant as he said, “Good evening. I’ve come
to see if you’ve a room for just one night. I came for a
treatment this morning from the eastern shore, and there’s no
bus ’til morning.”

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He told me he’d been hunting for a room since noon but with no
success, no one seemed to have a room. “I guess it’s my face…
I know it looks terrible, but my doctor says with a few more
treatments…”

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For a moment I hesitated, but his next words convinced me,
“I could sleep in this rocking chair on the porch. My bus
leaves early in the morning.”

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I told him we would find him a bed, but to rest on the porch.
I went inside and finished getting supper. When we were ready,
I asked the old man if he would join us. “No thank you.
I have plenty.”  And he held up a brown paper bag.

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When I had finished the dishes, I went out on the porch to talk
with him a few minutes. It didn’t take a long time to see that
this old man had an oversized heart crowded into that tiny body.

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He told me he fished for a living to support his daughter, her
five children, and her husband, who was hopelessly crippled from
a back injury.

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He didn’t tell it by way of complaint; in fact, every other
sentence was prefaced with a thanks to God for a blessing.

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He was grateful that no pain accompanied his disease, which was
apparently a form of skin cancer. He thanked God for giving him
the strength to keep going.

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At bedtime, we put a camp cot in the children’s room for him.
When I got up in the morning, the bed linens were neatly folded
and the little man was out on the porch.

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He refused breakfast, but just before he left for his bus,
haltingly, as if asking a great favor, he said,

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“Could I please come back and stay the next time I have a
treatment?  I won’t put you out a bit. I can sleep fine in a
chair.”  He paused a moment and then added, “Your children made
me feel at home. Grownups are bothered by my face, but children
don’t seem to mind.”

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I told him he was welcome to come again.

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And on his next trip he arrived a little after seven in the
morning. As a gift, he brought a big fish and a quart of the
largest oysters I had ever seen. He said he had shucked them
that morning before he left so that they’d be nice and fresh.

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I knew his bus left at 4:00 a.m., and I wondered what time he
had to get up in order to do this for us.

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In the years he came to stay overnight with us, there was never
a time that he did not bring us fish or oysters or vegetables
from his garden.

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Other times we received packages in the mail, always by special
delivery; fish and oysters packed in a box of fresh young
spinach or kale, every leaf carefully washed.

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Knowing that he must walk three miles to mail these and knowing
how little money he had made the gifts doubly precious.

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When I received these little remembrances, I often thought of a


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