The story was heard on the radio years ago, told by Dick Summer over WBZ in Boston. Perhaps because I recorded it, and listened to it every once in a while, it stayed on the bookshelf in my head.

For a while I even had it memorized. Let me see if I can still recall the first few lines. It’s not my story, but it went something like this:

“In a hick town a man with a shaggy face is walking along the road. I see him hitching a ride so I ask where he is going, and he says, ‘Anywhere you are.’ But I’m going nowhere, so we decided to eat and talk. In between bites of a cupcake he tells me he is going from Pittsburgh to Scranton. I ask him why, and he says, ‘Because I need a job.’ And then we both realize, I can’t help him.”

The story goes on, but the essential point has been made. The images in it have always remained strong with me. The shaggy face. The small town. Was it winter, maybe even Christmas time? Did it matter?

Then on a recent Sunday it came back in perfect clarity, almost word for word.

I saw him.

He was walking the sidewalk along North State Street in West Concord, heading south. His pace was slow, almost as if he were broken. Each step seemed labored, a deliberate act of defiance against some unseen force trying to hold him back. He was no match for me and the dog as we powered by him on our walk. But I wondered about him as he fell further back in the distance behind us. I wondered about him as I noticed that in the time the dog and I had taken the full measure of our walk, he had yet to make it to the place we made our first turn.

Where was he going? Who was he? I had never seen him before, I was sure. What was his story? Perhaps he was still on his way to Scranton.

Who can say what propelled me, but when I got home the dog went in the house and I got in the car. When I caught up to him he was near the old Korner Kupboard store on North State. I drove by slowly, taking a closer look, and kept on going. A bit farther down the road I made a U-turn and went back.

When I pulled up alongside and rolled down window to ask if he would like a ride, there was no hesitation. He was in the car, thankful and ready faster than I could make a final check of who I was inviting in.

I asked where he was headed. It felt like he was not fully sure himself, but needed to say something. “Downtown” was his answer, so off we went.

There wasn’t much of a conversation. He said he was homeless and that was about all there was to say. I didn’t want to probe, maybe I recognized limits of how far I could go with this. Maybe he did as well. So we drove for the most part in silence, the heater on low and the Grieg Piano Concerto playing softly on the radio.

From my sideward glances I could see he needed a shave, a haircut, maybe someplace to wash his clothes. But I couldn’t get a fix on his age. Thirty? Forty? Fifty? Twenty? Any age was possible. Weathering on a hard life can sculpt deceptive appearances.

There was no specific place downtown he wanted to go, so I dropped him off at the corner of Capitol and North Main streets. Getting out of the car he looked me in the eye and simply said, “God bless you.”

“God bless you too.” I said back. Our eyes unlocked, the door closed and I turned left on to North Main Street. The window was rolled down, the radio got a little louder, the wind blew through like summer.

But it wasn’t summer. It was winter, there was snow on the ground, cold was in the air, darkness would come earlier to the day. But there was a bit of warmth in the air, a February thaw kind of thing that seemed to subdue winter for a few minutes.

You might say nothing really changed in the world. It was a brief encounter that moved two people along in their day. He went south and I went north. A couple “God bless yous” were exchanged. And for me, there was a bit of reflection on God’s blessings in my life.

The dog was waiting when I got home, happy to have me around again. And the February thaw continued for some time after the sun went down.

(John Gfroerer of Concord owns a video production company based at the Capitol Center for the Arts.)