"Serendipity..........................."

Last night Beth had this craving for an ice cream cone from Graeter’s and, while neither I nor the granddaughter were in the mood, we agreed to the drive. In my own mind was the possibility that their bakery display might provide a muffin or a Danish for breakfast. McKenna was just along for the ride, I suppose, although she did eventually polish off the rest of Mamaw’s vanilla cone. As it turned out, actually, the pastry cabinet was nearly bare and so the whole adventure is one of those that makes one wonder “why” and “what if”. There are two routes that could have taken. I chose the expressway, it being longer, but quicker. Normally, when a tire blows, my course of action is to immediately pull over to the side for repairs; but, while a strange sound had alerted us of what had taken place, the car, itself, was still seemingly handling the intrusion well and the exit ramp was only a quarter mile away. Pulling into a deserted garage just off that escape, we confirmed our suspicions and the old man, not all that enthusiastic any more to tackle such tasks, got the gear and the donut out of the trunk. There was no mumbling. The event was unpleasant. Life, however, is life. While I was fumbling with the jack, however, reducing its size so as to slide it beneath the frame, a silver SUV rolled in beside us and emerged, leaving his wife at the wheel and a couple of young children in the rear. He offered; I accepted; and the two of us remedied the situation in but a matter of minutes. Dialogue between us, though, revealed that his kids attend the nearby school where I’ve been working the past decade and his father is a former acquaintance of mine from the railroad! He and she, both, rejected my offer of payment, but accepted my heart-felt gratitude, the two of us shaking hands, indeed a bit of a tear in my eye to have found such Samaritan spirit yet alive in this world today. The blow-out, we had learned was caused by a small, rectangular piece of metal, no doubt flotsam and jetsam from the construction on the overpass we had passed under, just one of the negatives and the chance choices involved in the incident. Yet the encounter with this family and the fact that there had been no serious accident plus my having been able to avoid dealing with it in the vicinity of high-speed traffic speaks to me of His hand in the matter. Seeing several others this morning facing the same dilemma not far from that very site where my own bit of bad luck occurred makes me wonder if perhaps this isn’t one of the methods President Obama is utilizing to provide “shovel-ready jobs”…….