Charity should remain at home for some causes

You'll be amazed to learn the famous quotation, "Charity begins at home," is more than 2,000 years old.

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Equally astounding is that it was first uttered by some Phoenician poet-philosopher-playwright dude named Publius Terentius Afer, circa 170 BC.

And to think, I always thought it was my Uncle Leo from Brooklyn who coined that one.

Which brings us to the story of local hero Tom Jones, who ran the New York City Marathon earlier this month to raise money for United Cerebral Palsy. Jones' story got me thinking about old Publius and his favorite one-liner.

It also reminded me of my trip to the Augusta Exchange shopping center last Saturday, when every red light left us stranded smack in the middle of Car Wash Alley.

Stationed practically on every corner yelling and jumping and holding placards were some of Augusta's finest young athletes, asking unsuspecting folks in their soiled vehicles for their business.

There's me and my 2-year-old son stopped in front of the computer store with the windows cracked halfway.

Through those cracks popped the smiling, shouting heads of two eager young ladies who were happy to inform me that my car was a disgrace to Daimler Chrysler and needed a good washing.

They said I should turn around and pull over in front of the local smoothie shop, where they'd restore my brown Caravan to its original white lacquer finish. They also said I could name my own price.

I've had less trouble snubbing those pesky homeless windshield washers in lower Manhattan.

"You can give us 10 bucks, or two, whatever you want," said the face in the passenger-side window. "We're raising money for our team to go to Atlanta next month."

What an admirable endeavor - upstanding young athletes hawking their services on the streets of Augusta, working hard on a Saturday morning to finance the games they play.

They come armed with their buckets and sponges and moxie, and these teams are everywhere, every single Saturday.

Car washes to fund soccer tournaments in North Carolina. Car washes to pay for basketball trips to Florida. Car washes to finance baseball playoffs in Tennessee.

Which brings us back to people like Tom Jones, a local athlete using his sport to raise money - not to finance an all-expenses paid trip to the Big Apple, but to help others less fortunate.

So where are the car washes for the homeless, the sick, the underprivileged?

So where are the parents when it comes time to open the checkbook for their own kids' extracurriculars?

It's not that I don't understand your plight. It can get pretty pricey when you've got one kid in hockey and baseball and another in figure skating.

But why should you, the one in the dirty Suburban, pay their way?

Give me a kid collecting money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association on Labor Day, and I'll empty my pocket.

Give me the kids from the North Augusta-based United States Association of Christian Athletes, who held several events to raise money to fund sports camps for local underprivileged children, and I'm there.

You want to go play that game in Orlando next spring? Go wash your mom's car.

As my main man Publius would say, charity begins at home.

--From the Thursday, November 13, 2003 printed edition of the Augusta Chronicle