Published: September 07, 2008 12:00 am            

Store owner lends helping hand

Gustav evacuee tells story of the compassion she found in Oklahoma

When disaster strikes, there's no better place to be than Oklahoma. Irene Gardner of Nederland, Texas, knows how nice Okies can be.

Gardner's MasterCard expired at the end of August and she received a new one. In the meantime, she went to her bank and asked for a better interest rate. The bank sent her a new platinum card. Thinking her banking business was all in order, she wasn't concerned about getting back home when Hurricane Gustav caused her and her family to evacuate.

Gardner, her oldest daughter and her daughter, a friend of her daughter and her father, and a grandson loaded up four vehicles and sat out the storm in Newalla at her daughter Karen Greeson's home.

The storm missed Nederland and Wednesday morning the troop prepared to go back to Texas.

Gardner and her grandson drove to Country Corner to fill up their two vehicles with gas. Her MasterCard wouldn't work and she went inside to use the telephone. The card wasn't activated and all she had to do was call from her home telephone. Sounds easy, if she could get home to her telephone.

"I was depending on my MasterCard to get us home," Gardner said.

She and her grandson were in the store trying to figure out what they could do.

"She was crying," said the owner of Country Corner, who asked not be named. "I asked her how much money they had and she said $25 or $30."

"He saw how stressed I was and he told us to go out and fill up both vehicles and he would come up with a plan," Gardner said.

While the Gardners filled up the vehicles with $174 of gas, the owner called his family.

"It was a family decision to help her out," the owner said, "because the store is a family business."

The Gardners went back in the store and "all the other customers left the store and the owner came around the counter, gave me $100 in case of an emergency and asked me to mail him a cashier's check when I got home."

"He didn't know me, he didn't ask for my driver's license or anything," Gardner said. "People just don't do things like that now."

The family arrived home Wednesday night and everything is all right, Gardner said.

Greeson took a peach pie, a jar of chili and some pickled peppers she had canned and gave them to the store owner. She told him she would give him the money but knowing her mother it was already on the way, Gardner said.

"She's right, I already have a cashier's check and it's in the mail," she said.

Greeson said a friend of hers went to the Country Corner and told them that she would be buying all her gas there from now on and he asked her why.

"Didn't you help a lady yesterday?" she asked. "That's why."

That's not why the owner helped Gardner, he said.

"We have to help each other," he said. "Only good comes from good, it doesn't come from bad."

        

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