We live way out in the middle of farm country, and life is kind of different out here.
When a stranger drives up to the house looking for work, this is not a big deal nor an unusual occurrence.
It happens from time to time, and sometimes we actually do need a little seasonal help around the farm. A few years ago we had a very strange dude roll up to the house in his station wagon full of tools and supplies. He asked if we had any repair work to be done, because he wasn’t a farmhand looking for extra work, he was a retired electrician and HVAC tech. Dad was all set to turn the man away, but once he heard about the HVAC work he invited him inside for a meal. It was customary to offer a man food and drink before hiring him, to show hospitality, and dad was happy to do so because the old furnace wasn’t long for the world. We had a wood burning furnace to power the water boiler, and provided heat for the house itself. We didn’t have air conditioning at the time, but the heater was of vital importance to our survival through the long, harsh winters. The man spent six hours taking the old furnace apart, working a lot of the individual pieces, and then putting it all back together. When he was done the furnace didn’t look any less ugly, but it ran so quietly, and blew out heated air more strongly than I had ever felt from it before.