Small gesture was the stuff of art

Editor’s note: This column is being reprinted from Dec. 14, 2005. During this holiday season, Jack shares an important message. While gifts wrapped in brightly colored paper are nice, it’s the small acts of kindness — opening a door, lending a helping hand, expressing genuine appreciation — that are truly special.

No wonder Norman Rockwell came here to paint.

It’s just that sort of place.

It was an afternoon last week before the big snow hit. I was trying to get an early jump on things by mailing some Christmas packages to our daughters in Boston.

There I was, looking like a holiday caricature, bundled up against the weather and carrying three large cardboard boxes, stacked so high I could barely see where I was going.

Ascending the steps in front of the post office, I was watching for my footing out of the corner of my eye.

When I was about halfway up the steps, the door swung open.

Out came a guy I didn’t know.

He was of medium build, and his hair was closely cropped. He had a beard that was only about half a step up from five o’clock shadow.

He zipped past me, flipping through his mail and reading the envelopes as he went down the stairs.

Then the Norman Rockwell moment happened.

As he neared the foot of the steps and I neared the top, he swung suddenly around, ran up the stairs and beat me to the door.

Grabbing the handle, he swung it open to let me in.

Then, remembering the second doors from the vestibule into the post office lobby, he followed me in and repeated the gesture.

“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks. And Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas,” he said.

And he was gone.

And I stood there, having received a special Christmas gift in that simple act of courtesy and generosity, and grinned like an idiot.

Norman Rockwell, I thought, could have turned that into a classic cover for the old Saturday Evening Post.

He would have captured the chill in the air and how ridiculous I looked with that big stack of packages. He would have done justice to the humanity of the moment. It was pure Americana.

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For the record, Rockwell did come here to paint at one point in the early 1950s. A print of his charming rendition of then-county-extension-agent Herald Rippey hangs in the Jay County Courthouse.