Mr. Lee was born in 1946, out in the country. He was never sent to school; he never learned to read and write. Perfectly able to work, he does, and will help anyone do anything they need doing. You can insert your favorite politically correct term here, but Mr. Lee is special. He doesn't talk too plain, but once you get to know him, conversations are a breeze. Most folks that know him understand he is good as gold, and remarkably, by his own admission, rarely has a bad day.
One day Mr. Lee asked me to help him sell his aluminum cans. You see, while he walk and visits in the community, he picks up cans and stores them in 55gal drums, until he has a pick-up truck load. This particular Spring day was breezy and a little chilly, I wore a button-up shirt as an extra layer. I arrived at his house, backed the truck up to the cans, got out of the truck, slid my phone in the breast pocket of my button-up shirt, and Mr. Lee and I started loading cans. With almost all of the cans loaded, we were down to the bottom of the barrels where rain water had accumulated and a few cans were floating. As I bent over and reached into the barrel, to the very bottom, after the stragglers, my smart phone slid out of my pocket and .... SPLASH, BLUB BLUB all the way to the bottom. With cat-like reflexes, I snatched it up, tore it apart, and threw it on the dash in the sunshine to dry.
The thought of the very expensive flooded smart phone really got to me. I began to curse as we finished with the aluminum. With all the cans loaded, still cussing, I got in the truck, and Mr. Lee and I headed off to the scrap yard. Going down the road, with me still ranting, Mr. Lee looked at me and spoke the first words he said since the horrible splash of the phone in the barrel. He said "Ashley?". I calmed myself so as not to speak harshly to him in my frustration, then I said "Yes Lee?" To that he replied " ya ya you gotta button on your pa pocket."
