It was an easy phone call to make. I knew it would be. I called my neighbor who lives across the road, not the street mind you for we are country folks, and asked for help.

“I want to put in a couple of enormous trees this weekend and I was wondering if you would bring your back hoe over and dig the holes then help us get them in the ground. There’s no humanly way possible to pick them up.”

“I’ll be glad to help you,” Doug replied then asked what day and time. The day proved troublesome because he and his wife and young daughter had already planned something.

“Don’t worry,” I replied. “I’ll get my brother-in-law to help me. I was just thinking that it would be easier for you to drive the back hoe over than for him to load his up and pull a trailer down here.”

An hour later, the phone rang. “I’ve got it worked out so I can help you. What time?”

“No,” I replied firmly. “You’ve already got plans. I don’t want to bother you.”

But he insisted. Many times, he and his wife will say to me, “It’s the neighborly thing to do. We want to help you.”

And each time I hear that, I think back to the rural South of my upbringing and all the times I heard my parents or others proclaim, “It’s the neighborly thing to do.”

Daddy used to say, “You can only help someone when they need help. All the other times you think you’re helping, you’re just pretending for the sake of your own conscience.”

Like many things he used to say, I didn’t understand that until I grew older and wiser in the ways of the world. There have been times when someone did something gracious and unexpected for me and though I appreciated it, I didn’t need it.

Likewise, there have been times when I made a gesture of kindness to someone else and while it was appreciated, it was not needed. I felt good about myself because I offered an act of compassion but finally I realized that unless I was helping when there was truly a need, I was just being a nice person, not a completely selfless one.

The other thing I have come to realize is that usually when I thought I was being generous and helpful were during times of convenience for me, when it didn’t interrupt my own schedule so I had the time to be giving. I am certain that we must get extra credit and a bigger smile from the Lord Almighty when we put someone else’s needs in front of our own, when we change our plans to help a neighbor in need.

Once when I was a kid, Daddy was going to help a friend in another county. He had promised to plow his garden for him since the man was ailing.

“Why?” I asked, curious at 10 years old of the ways of adults.

“Because it’s the right thing to do. The neighborly thing.”

“He ain’t our neighbor,” I replied. “He lives a long way away.”

“The Bible says ‘love thy neighbor’ and that means anybody in the world,” Daddy replied.

Southern hospitality is reveled throughout all the world and it should be for there is truly something different about Southerners. I never visit anyone’s home or even meet a friend for lunch without grabbing some little something and taking them a gift. It might be homegrown tomatoes or a book or the latest issue of Y’all, but the Southern blood in me demands that I take a gift.

One day I had stopped by to visit an older friend of mine, but first I had called to let her know. We enjoyed our chat over a cup of coffee and a piece of cake. When I got ready to leave, she handed me a little brown bag with the top wadded-down and, a bit embarrassed, she explained.

“When you called that you were comin’, I hurried around to see what I had that I could give you. This is all I could find – these are some new potatoes out of my garden.” She blushed a little. “I’m sorry but it’s all I’ve got.”

I grabbed her and hugged her, realizing the magnitude of the gift because of the thought behind it.

“Thank you, sweet Sue. Potatoes are my favorite food in the world.”

And though I didn’t need the potatoes, it was certainly a neighborly thing to do.