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If you don’t read anything else this morning. Read this!

By Benjamin Groff II GroffMedia© | benandsteve.com | ©2026
November 02, 2026

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Good morning, coffee drinkers.

In a time long, long ago—before your telephone could give you directions and then criticize you for missing the turn—people installed radios in their vehicles so they could talk to other people driving down the highway.

Imagine that. Strangers talking to strangers. On purpose.

They were called CB radios. You picked yourself a handle, mounted an antenna, and suddenly you had company all the way across Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, or any place you wanted to go.

You could find out about an accident ahead, ask where to get a decent hamburger, or learn that a highway patrolman was sitting just beyond the next hill.

Naturally, that last piece of information was provided strictly in the interest of public safety.

We were supposed to be driving fifty-five miles per hour. During the energy crisis, the federal government pushed the country toward a national fifty-five-mile-per-hour limit to conserve fuel.

Everyone was pitching in. Whether they wanted to or not.

Some days, gasoline lines stretched for blocks. You could spend a considerable amount of your afternoon waiting to buy the fuel you needed to get somewhere you were already late arriving.

And those places selling gasoline were called service stations.

That word “service” meant something.

An attendant came out to your car, pumped your gasoline, washed the windshield, and often checked the oil. Someone might notice a low tire or something under the hood that needed attention before it left you stranded twenty miles outside town.

Then came the growing spread of self-service.

Somehow, we were persuaded that getting out in the wind, rain, or summer heat to do the work ourselves was an improvement.

I still have questions about that arrangement.

The attendant disappeared. The windshield stayed dirty. And that little problem under the hood became your problem somewhere down the road.

Of course, things change. I understand that.

What troubles me is how easily we seem to have accepted a similar disappearance of everyday courtesy.

I remember waving at people as we drove through town. Sometimes you knew them. Sometimes you didn’t. A hand came up from the steering wheel, and another hand answered.

Nobody needed your voting history before returning the greeting.

If someone was stopped beside the road with the hood raised, other drivers would pull over. Somebody might have jumper cables. Somebody else knew enough about engines to be useful. Another person would stand back and wave traffic around.

There was usually at least one fellow offering advice nobody had asked for.

But he had stopped, too.

I know there are still people doing those things. I would hate to overlook them while complaining about everybody else. Good people stop to help every day, and plenty of folks still wave back.

I just wish their example got as much attention as the anger.

Turn on the television during election season and you would think the entire country was populated by dangerous strangers, crooked neighbors, and people whose greatest ambition was to destroy your way of life.

Apparently, some of them also want to be county commissioner.

Now, political mudslinging certainly wasn’t invented yesterday. We had ugly campaigns long before any of us were born. And the America I grew up in had serious injustices that a friendly wave did nothing to erase.

I remember those things, too.

But I also remember an expectation that you ought to know how to conduct yourself around other people. A person could disagree with you and still deserve a chair at the table.

An election could end, and the next morning you still had to live together.

You bought groceries at the same store. Your children attended the same school. You might need that neighbor’s help getting a truck out of the mud before the week was over.

Calling him an enemy on Tuesday could become inconvenient by Thursday.

These days, suspicion seems to arrive before the introduction.

The little old lady you have seen at the drugstore for twenty years volunteers to work an election, and suddenly somebody wants you to believe she belongs to a secret organization capable of manipulating the entire country.

That is quite a promotion for a woman who mostly wanted to help her community and get home before dark.

Elections deserve scrutiny. Mistakes deserve correction. Actual wrongdoing deserves investigation.

But an accusation needs evidence. Hearing it repeated until we can recite it in our sleep does not make it true.

And a neighbor who voted differently has not automatically become a threat.

I hear people say their small town still looks after its own. I am glad when that is true.

But what happens when someone unfamiliar comes through?

Someone with a different accent? A different skin color? A husband where you expected a wife? A political bumper sticker you wouldn’t put on your own car?

Does the welcome hold?

That seems like a fair measure of a community’s hospitality.

It is easy to be pleasant to someone who reminds you of yourself. A stranger gives us a chance to find out just how far our good manners extend.

The same goes for the people who come here hoping to work and build a life. We can discuss immigration laws without pretending to know every person’s motives by looking at them. We can uphold voting requirements without treating an accent as evidence of a crime.

Surely we can manage that much.

I do not believe every ounce of American civility has disappeared. I have received too much kindness to say that honestly.

But I think we have allowed contempt to become far too comfortable in our daily lives. We hear it, repeat it, laugh at it, and eventually carry it out the front door with us.

Maybe we ought to pay closer attention to what we are carrying.

Those old CB radios could be noisy. People interrupted each other. Some talked too much. Others had no business singing into a microphone.

Still, somewhere beyond the hood of your car was another person traveling the same stretch of highway.

You might never learn their real name. You might never meet them.

But they could tell you about trouble ahead. You could do the same for them. And for a few miles, the road felt a little less lonely.

I miss that.

So if you see me waving, go ahead and wave back.

I am not conducting a political survey.

I am saying good morning.

And if you know a place ahead that still serves a decent cup of coffee, I am listening.