Day 239; Angels Among Us

NO, we didn't take this picture
We were way too frightened

Angels Among Us

Yesterday I wrote about angels and got lots of response and debate. Folks wondered if I shared the man’s belief on angels and whether I believed at all.

I also wrote “Keep your eyes and ears open. You never know who or what you will encounter.” I love it when a plan comes together, but I had no idea how badly I would need those words myself.

My manager Jeanine and I were on a road trip. We don’t do them very often, but when I started my career 25 years ago, I actually lived on the road. More often than not I was alone and sometimes I encountered some rather scary things. I took all of the necessary precautions, but as I look back, I feel that I have had some extra special protection.

I’ve traveled through small towns and big cities long before there was a GPS or even a cell phone. ATMs were new and almost always for the use of locals only. Still, I managed to be on the road 20 days a month without any issues or real troubles.

Yesterday, however, was one for the books.

We left early in the a.m. to allow for a day light ten hour drive up north. Everything was going beautifully, but the melodies and sweet guitar sounds of Keb Mo were lulling Jeanine, the navigator into a nice sleep.

I’m one of those drivers that does not mind a backseat, front seat or even middle seat driver; the more eyes on the road the better. So when Jeanine mentioned the need for coffee, we began to keep a look out for Starbucks. I love the green tea and we could both get soy milk.

Believe it or not, finding a Starbucks on the highway is not that easy. We settled on coffee from a rest stop. It was one of the weirdest rest stops I’ve ever seen. Inside, were  wild animals; they were dead and stuffed and posed as if ready to pounce. We both looked on in shock and wonder. Then we got our coffee and got the heck out of there and headed back up the highway.

One exit later, we saw the sign for mecca; Starbucks was just one mile away. We looked at the coffee from the wild animal place and laughed. Jeanine and I are rather frugal and can go on and on about waste. Had we not grown up with the image of a Native American crying over the highway trash, we would have thrown those cups out of the window Thelma and Louise style.

We decided to wait for a trash can and it's a good thing that we did.
 As we got off the highway, we looked down over the over pass and noticed that the traffic had suddenly stopped. We figured that it was an accident and were grateful that we had gotten off the road.

We asked the barista about an alternate route and set out for it, but we had to turn back around because we needed to find a trash can to throw the old coffee away.

That moment of care took care of us. Just as we turned on the road we needed, we saw water pouring in from everywhere. The Roanoke Rapids had flooded and we were one car away from being trapped. The car before us was stuck in the middle of the oncoming waters. (Later we learned that a sinkhole had formed.)

We got out of the oncoming disaster and made it back to Interstate 95 which was now completely closed. We pulled into a crowed gas station and Jeanine went inside for directions. The attendant was swamped and frustrated and of very little assistance.

Outside, we pulled up to a man whose tags were from my home state of Delaware and asked him if he knew of an alternate route as the wonderful GPS was not giving one up. He told us about the old route 301 but didn’t know how to get there. A young man who lived locally smiled and told us to go down round the way over the tracks make a left and the  another one back over round yonder.

He smiled the smile of an angel and I knew that angels were both with us and alive.

We went that route and found the road and were on our way. As we drove though, we saw water rising flooding the houses as we drove by. Suddenly, we came to a stop and no one was moving. Cars started coming back in our direction, but the drivers were looking straight ahead saying nothing on this little two lane road. I asked someone what was going on and he yelled “Water, turn around.”

We did and made the first turn back over the tracks to get round the way back over by mama and thems.

There were only a few other cars on the road with us and the GPS kept trying to take us back to the 95, but we trusted our angels; the one with the Delaware tags and the one with the beautiful smile. Somehow we got way north of the mess and out of the flooded town.

Later we learned that the highway didn’t open up until 4 hours after we got out.

I can smile and wonder about the beliefs of others, but you never know who you will need or how you will need them.

I am grateful for all of the discourse on angels. I’m even more grateful for the ones that showed up.

Be you, be well, be watchful.

Bertice Berry, PhD.

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Inside the reststop...This picture we took