There’s always something to learn when reading the editor’s or publisher’s columns in the opening pages of magazines or the Providence Sunday Journal. In Sunday’s paper, executive editor Lynne Sullivan shared that Trader Joe’s sells Head to Toe Moisturizing Balm, just what is needed to soothe her husband Greg’s hand cracks. The problem: The salve sells out quickly and she has to wait for the seasonal supply to arrive.

Sullivan also used her note to subtly underscore the centerpiece of Sunday’s issue: the declining population of horseshoe crabs and why this is of concern to environmentalists and the medical community. The headline on her column that focused on her search for the balm reads, “Why even the humblest things can have great value.”

From the Sunday paper I turned to the August issue of National Geographic to see what editor Nathan Lump had to say. He, too, offered a personal experience to introduce a story about the changing worlds of the remaining cave societies. He mentions his and his husband’s visit to Matera in southern Italy and the Sassi known for its cave dwellings, which were inhabited as early at 7000 B.C. He learned he’s not cut out for sleeping in caves.

Of all the letters to readers that resonated with me was that written by John Palumbo, publisher of Rhode Island Monthly. He wrote about buying his first car at the age of 18. I’ve looked to find the issue that carried the missive without luck. Nonetheless, the nugget to the story was how he followed the advice of an elder when it came time to register the vehicle. Armed with a name and a gallon jug of cheap Italian wine, he entered a packed DMV and without a punishing wait walked out with what he had come to get.

Sometimes it’s only later in life that we realize how lucky we have been.

My first car was a maroon 1950 Plymouth sedan. The color is what hooked me. I paid $150 for the car, which I figured would come close to what it would cost me to get back East from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, where I had completed my freshman year.

Adding some icing to my logic, a classmate who had secured a summer job at a mine outside Lander, Wyoming, was willing to share expenses to get that far. Had I looked under the hood, had I driven anything but other people’s cars that always worked, I would have realized I would have been better off buying a bus ticket home. But this was MY car. This was MY adventure.

 We barely crossed into Oregon before we got the first of multiple flats. We limped on a spongy spare to the nearest gas station. This was an era of inner tubes, and the two of us quickly learned how to assist local garage mechanics in how to fix them. Finally, we broke down and paid $7 for a used tire that held up all the way to Lander. There were more problems. Steam rose from beneath the hood, prompting stops to fill a piping hot radiator. The car left a blinding screen of white smoke. Nonetheless, the car got us to Lander, stopping dead outside a saloon.

Little did I know the location it chose to stop was a stroke of luck.

My partner made a call to his friend, who thought he could also find me a summer job at the mine.  My summer had taken a twist, but that was fine.

But what do I do with the car, which sat motionless outside the saloon? An Indian who had had a few too many to be behind the wheel joined me. “Beautiful,” he said. I had to agree, the car looked great. I told him of all the car’s problems. He said nothing, but opened the passenger door and surveyed the interior.

“One hundred bucks,” he slurred.

I was dumbfounded. Had he heard me? I had given him every frustrating detail of our trip. The car was a maroon dream but should have been lemon yellow.

“Really?”

He nodded and reached into a satchel and started counting. I scribbled a bill of sale, which I handed him. He gave me 100 silver dollars that I should have kept, but invested in my second car at the end of the summer – a light blue Hudson Jet.  I opened the hood to this one and it got me home to Connecticut and much farther, thankfully.

So what I can I tell you about this issue of the Beacon? Ponder the irony that Steve Gothberg, who is overseeing construction of our new high schools, ran as a student on the Pilgrim cinder track that has been identified as a source of contaminants that have delayed construction of the new school.  It has been his nemesis.

But I’m confident a lot of good will come out of it. Steve is committed to having that happen.