BERNARDSTON — March 9 started as a difficult day for 64-year-old Gill resident Jim Ellis.
He had spent the day asking government agencies for support services that could help a struggling tenant. The effort, he said, involved “a lot of people who shook my hand, looked apologetic and did nothing.”
“I got home, and I sat down and was prepared to take my first glass of medicine, as I refer to it,” Ellis said with a chuckle. “That’s when the knock came on the door.”
While visiting his grandparents in Gill, 12-year-old Josh James Jr. of Bernardston was knocking on neighbors’ doors selling homemade chocolate chip cookies as part of his plan to raise enough money to buy a dirt bike like his older brother’s.
After three stops, he got to Jim Ellis’ door. His wife Laurie Ellis answered and asked, “How about $20 for the whole thing?”
“And his face lit up,” she recalled.
In the other room, Jim Ellis had muted the television to listen. Within three minutes of the young cookie seller zipping away on his scooter, Jim Ellis wrote a Facebook post asking locals for the boy’s name, and offering to buy him a dirt bike.
“In today’s world, you’re not judged by your character, you’re judged by who you voted for in the last election and your religious beliefs. Everybody is like this all the time at each other, and I hate it,” Jim Ellis said. “I couldn’t have been at a closer point to telling the world to go away, and this little boy restored my faith just that fast.”
Through Jim Ellis’ eyes, the young visitor embodied “old-school values” of treating others with respect and “[earning] your way in this world.”
“I’ve got to give this kid what he deserves,” Jim Ellis remembered thinking.
Back at Josh James Jr.’s grandparents’ home, his aunt mentioned a post she had seen on Facebook about a boy selling cookies for a dirt bike. The next morning, his mother, Laura James, responded to the post, which was already flooded with likes and comments.
As far as Jim Ellis’ offer, “We didn’t think much of it,” said dad Josh James Sr.
Then, within a week, Jim Ellis called the boy’s father, claiming he had found the perfect ride for his son — a 2012 Honda XR 80.
After a few unsuccessful Facebook Marketplace trips, Jim Ellis picked up the used dirt bike in Enfield, Connecticut, for $1,500.
“I don’t consider [the price] important,” Jim Ellis said. “I don’t know if anyone’s really going to understand this, but I got the better part of the deal. He restored my faith in humanity. Even if only for a little while, there’s still hope, and that was worth 10 dirt bikes to me. Money, I got. Hope for humanity, tank’s pretty empty.”
A week after Josh James Jr. first knocked on Jim and Laurie Ellis’ door, the couple’s truck pulled into the boy’s driveway, bright red dirt bike in tow.
In his father’s photo of the moment, the boy’s mouth hangs open in disbelief.
“I was pretty excited, pretty happy,” the young baker and biker remembered.
“It was all worth it,” Laurie Ellis said. “His smile couldn’t be any bigger.”
After a few hugs and photos, Jim Ellis told Josh James Jr. the lesson he hoped the surprise would teach him.
“I looked at him, and I went, ‘This is called paying it forward, son. I don’t expect you to understand what that means, but someday you will,'” Jim Ellis said.
Since Jim and Laurie Ellis’ gift, Josh James Jr. has set off multiple times each day to steer the dirt bike through his backyard, even in March’s cold 30-degree days, when he would head back inside with ruddy cheeks.
“What a generous thing to do for someone you don’t know … and then showing Josh an example of generosity, like this is how we bless other people,” Laura James said.
“I’m not the hero in this, he is. He’s the one that restored my faith,” Jim Ellis said of the 12-year-old who is no longer a stranger. “I’m still smiling.”
