Incredible Reality

History repeats itself. Sometimes, so do I

Incredible Reality

I used to have a smiling picture of Albert Einstein set as the wallpaper on my rinky-dink "stupid" cell phone. Anytime I'd see somebody with a "smart" phone then, I could flip it open and show my wallpaper. "See?" I'd say, "I have a 'smart' phone too."

I'm sure it's because I have seen technology advance and take over the lives of so many, that I have so little respect for it. I see hundreds of college students each day. Almost all of them are walking errant collision-paths while they text or read or game or something on their stupid "smart" phones. One of my own sons said, "My life is on my phone." Okay. I get it. But don't let that close your eyes to everything else. What's out there is amazing beyond imagination, and you might miss something, you know, real. Like, for example, an oncoming truck whose lane you've drifted into, while using your phone.

When I was college age, only rich people or corporate executives had remote phones, and they were good-sized units built into their expensive cars. You couldn't carry it around, it was corded to the transceiver which was built into the car's trunk. There were no cell phone towers. There was no internet. We still had lives, and they were plenty interesting lives, too.

I admit I've never been terribly social. Give me a decent job, and it's usually more people than I want to be around, and it's probably longer than I would have chosen to be around them, at a stretch. I really like to keep a dog, though. I've always had one or more dogs, as long as I've lived. The first incredible thing I wish to relate, involved the best of the many dogs I've owned. And he wasn't the amazing one. It was the bunny rabbit he spotted.

I had completed high school and had just entered college. We'd always had dogs at home, but one day a stray showed up, and I kept him, adopting him as my first solely-owned pet. I often drove home and would take all of the dogs, which included my dog Pooch and the family dogs, Napoleon and Lassie, on long walks across fields and through forests, covering miles of countryside. There was one stretch where there was a very narrow path right through some tall, thick alfalfa, made by a woman who traveled it with her horse. I and the three dogs started up that path with Pooch in the lead, then me, followed by the other two dogs. About fifty feet into the alfalfa, I was the first to notice a rabbit sitting in the path, nibbling the leaves.

The rabbit saw Pooch at the exact same moment that Pooch saw the rabbit. Pooch stopped and looked right at it, his ears perked. Unbelievably, instead of running away from us on the path, the rabbit bolted right at him! “What the...” I thought – and Pooch accepted, running directly toward the rabbit. But just before the rabbit got to Pooch, he sprang straight up into the air, it was at least three feet, and Pooch ran right under him. Pooch had no idea where the rabbit had gone, and began sniffing the alfalfa all around him, excitedly. The rabbit, having cleared the running dog, then saw me and shot off to one side into the alfalfa. I guess I was too tall.

I'd never seen anything like it in my life, and I sincerely doubt I ever will again. But there is so much we don't understand, and a couple of years later I would get to see something even more fascinating, and strange.

I had rented a cottage in some deep woods. I've noticed that trees of any given species in one area can be different than a tree of the same species from another area. The exact shape of the leaf or the texture of the bark varies, and that's just what I can see. I'm convinced that there are also species of insects that, though identifiable, have characteristics that can be drastically different in different geographical areas, and usually the variations are unknown.

In the area where the old cottage had been constructed, there was a seemingly unique species of harvestman – the proper name for what most of us refer to as a “daddy long-legs”. It's not really a spider although it sure looks like one. Most harvestmen don't bite, but the ones with red bodies found in the woods not far away from the cottage, did. It was a painful bite but apparently not poisonous, as I had no reaction to it.

Fortunately the more common grayish harvestmen that lived in the immediate area of the cottage were the common kind. I didn't mind them, and we left one another alone.

Then one summer evening I returned home from work, made my supper and fed my dog, and as it was beautiful out and the woods was typically fragrant, I went out to sit on the little front porch. The mosquitoes thought that was really cool, and came right to me. Unwilling to surrender my spot, I tried turning out the lights – all of them. It helped, but the darkness was oppressive, as no starlight or moonlight made it to the forest floor. I didn't have any candles, but I did have some tools, which included a propane torch.

One of the cool things I'd learned as a boy, was that if you screwed off the burner nozzle of a propane torch and removed the little orifice that was underneath it, you could still light the propane that came out of the tube. Only, without the mixture of air provided by the nozzle, it burned with a yellow flame. So I did just that. You could burn it high, like, a foot high, or very low, exactly like a candle. I selected the lower setting and I set the little tank of the torch beside my chair, on the porch floor.

Within minutes I began to see something very strange. The common harvestmen daddy-long-legs whatever-they-were began to gather in a circle around the propane torch. Remember that the flame was perhaps sixteen inches above the floor. I'm not talking about five or six of the little creatures, but dozens at first, and then, possibly a hundred or more. I was completely enthralled. What did they like about that torch? But then, something even more amazing occurred. A few of them started to move their bodies up and down – not just a little bit, but nearly touching the porch floor each time they went down, and then back up, quickly, about as fast as you can say “up-down-up-down-up-down”. Within fifteen seconds, they were all doing it. They were not in unison, at least. That would have really spooked me. Nevertheless, they were indeed in a ring around that torch, bobbing up and down as if they were dancing in place. I watched this for several minutes, then decided to try turning the torch up, just a little. It seemed to have no effect. So I lit a match and turned the torch flame off, watching them intently. They seemed confused and began to scatter, so I re-lit and adjusted the torch. Within thirty seconds they were back and the circle was growing larger. After about ten minutes I decided I'd had enough. I turned it off and went inside.

To be honest I never tried it again. But it's safe to say I've never lived in a location since, that had that many of the little creatures.

To get to the next bizarre happenstance, I need to provide a little background.

It's amazing to me how parents can affect us. Even if they're the greatest parents in the world, of course the effect isn't always good, but they always influence us. And of course, they aren't always right. My mother, for example, told me she expected I would become a writer.

My dad was one of the hardest-working men I've ever known. He was just one of those people who live to work. Although he had earned a college degree, raising four kids was a financial struggle, of course. In the early years, he traveled to work in old Chevrolets. They were probably well-used when he bought each of them, and he bought oil the way some people bought gasoline. His friend Roy would always argue that Chevies were high-production, cheap cars that wore out too quickly. So in about 1960, I think, Dad went to a Buick dealer and bought a used 1955 Plymouth Belvedere with a V-8 engine.

The car ran great and had real power, but within a week, Dad was alarmed. He went back to the dealer to demand an explanation. “Why doesn't it use oil?” he demanded.

“Why,” a baffled salesman replied, “it's not supposed to use oil.”

Dad didn't believe him. Even the Chevy pickup my grandfather owned, carefully-used, needed oil. But eventually, after years of trouble-free operation, he was convinced.

I listened to that story over and over, and of course when I bought cars, I wouldn't even consider owning a Chevy. And the facts seemed to bear out the conclusion. They did rust out before other vehicles. Once I relented and bought a Chevy pickup, and it spun a timing chain, costing me a lot of money to get it fixed. I've noticed there were more of them sitting disabled along the road than other makes, and today I still wouldn't buy one, even if there were no other cars or trucks being made.

Every now and then, something happens that should not have been possible, or at least, it's completely implausible. I'm sure occurrences like the one I'm about to describe usually result in multiple deaths. So far, I've been pretty lucky, knock on wood. Or protected, thank you very much. I'm not talking about little things like getting smacked in the face with a handle after stepping on a rake, which in fact I've done. That made me mad; this one made me pray. “In one swell foop”, as a good friend used to say, six almost unbelievable things happened.

Many years ago I nailed down my first decent job. It was a job driving a photo delivery and pick-up van. I had a flat container filled with film and print envelopes that rested on the engine cover beside me. In these early old flat-nosed vans, the engine cover was back between the two front bucket seats.

I was quite young of course, and had been out until four that morning. I'd left my girlfriend's parents' home at three-thirty. I had a half-hour drive to get to work and had to be there at seven. That gives you a good idea how much sleep I'd had. To boot, I was developing a cold, one of those that make you feel like you're not really there. Drowsy, sniffles, tired and not particularly “with it”.

As I've raised kids myself, now, I can imagine what my mom might have said. You always want to protect your kids, but after a while you realize that you can't. If Mom had had a premonition, as I've sometimes believed I have, she might have said, “Don't stay out too late, remember you have work. You have a cold? Stay home! Life's too short. Make sure you don't drive too fast, especially in fog, and stay alert!” I wouldn't have listened to a word of it anyway. It must be genetic, my kids are the same.

Between two towns where I had stops, there was a distance of maybe twelve miles. It was a foggy morning and I'd been out on the road for a couple of hours already, driving a circuitous route. I remember passing the sign that said “Warrior Run High School” at about sixty-five miles per hour, flying down a long hill. It was a really straight road with a series of sharp little drops. Mesmerizing. I simply lost track of where I was. But up ahead, Route 54 crossed my path, a three-lane highway usually heavy with truck traffic. Where I would cross, 54 was in a broad turn, sharply banked toward me.

I'll never forget it. I must have been about twenty feet from the stop sign when I realized it was there, appearing out of the fog. I was still at sixty-five miles an hour. There were vehicles on 54 in front of me, there was no way in hell I could stop, there wasn't even time to slow down. I recall thinking, “So this is how I will die.” My left hand took a death-grip on the wheel, my right laid on the horn.

It was all I could do.

The first unbelievable thing was, I didn't hit any other vehicles. But going through the intersection at that speed I didn't even get a look at how close I came. The second was, when I hit Route 54 which was banked toward me, all of my momentum was directed upward at perhaps twenty degrees from dead-level – and I'd been traveling down a long hill. Once across 54, the road continues on a slight downward grade. So, at the upper edge of the banked turn, my van left the ground. The third thing was what happened while I was airborne. The envelopes were neatly arranged in a big cardboard breadbox. The box floated at least a foot off of the engine cover. The envelopes were all out of the box, floating six inches above that. My head hit the ceiling. It was a pretty big arc, I felt the suspension drop as the vehicle took to the air. I recall thinking, “When it comes down and hits, I'll crash! The van's suspension will be destroyed!” I realized that at very least, I was about to lose my job.

The truck came down hard with a deep CRUNCH that convinced me I wouldn't be able to drive away. My chin bumped the steering wheel, despite my now two-fisted grip. And yet, every envelope came down in perfect order in the box, which came down precisely as it had been, on the engine cover. The vehicle was still moving, although most of its momentum had been sapped, so I tapped the brakes and drifted it off to the right berm. The engine was running, and I shut it off. I just sat there for a few minutes.

Eventually I decided I had to get out and check out the broken springs or bent axles, whatever I had, sometime. That brought up the fourth unbelievable thing. There wasn't a car or truck in sight. Not one. No resultant wrecks behind me, and no one coming, either. I knew there had been vehicles when I went across that highway. They all had gotten the hell out of there, apparently.

The fifth unbelievable thing: No damage. No flat tires, no dropped corners from a broken spring, no bent axles, no sticky steering, everything worked. I could not begin to understand how that was possible. For any vehicle.

And that leaves the sixth and most unbelievable thing of all.

The vehicle I was driving had always been the object of my scorn because of what it was. And yet it had endured all of that, and protected my undeserving hide through my irresponsible should-have-been-my-next-to-the-last-ride behavior. And that's why I know without doubt I was being watched-over. I was allowed to go on living in spite of myself. Because it just wasn't possible.

It was a Chevy.

As I said when I started to relate this particular event, this incident caused me to pray. Of course I'd been brought up by Christian parents who grew up in the Great Depression. It's strange how need and stress cause people to turn to faith, and how prosperity and plenty seem to turn them away. But in this case, I felt I'd been spared and I hadn't even asked. Of course, someone else had. I had a lot of time to think about that while raising my own kids. Not really firm in any faith, I nevertheless looked around me and decided that the complexity of the world, all the life on it and universe around it simply could not have happened by itself. It was so far beyond my understanding that there had to be a higher power. Besides, what great wisdom did these other plain ol' people have, who claimed there was not?

So I asked, in my own simple-minded way, for divine protection for my own children. I still ask, each day. In retrospect, it has been one of the few things I had that ever gave me comfort. On the one hand you might say, “It wasn't much.” Well, it was something.

One day, I was about to drive from my mailbox to the house, some short distance up the hill from the road. My two kids, my first two, had jumped out of the car while I checked for mail, and had been running and laughing around the car. I said, “come on,” and got back into the car to continue up the hill. I felt the rear of the car drop a little, and looked in the rear view mirror. Both my little boy and little girl had climbed onto the trunk lid, laughing still, and were motioning for me to proceed. It was a good flat deck, a reasonable seat, and I decided that if I drove slowly, they'd get a good ride out of it. It wasn't far, and this car had an automatic transmission. So I slowly continued up the hill.

Shortly I reached a point where I usually backed up and proceeded on into the level driveway. Ordinarily I do it almost automatically, I throw it in reverse and go, covering about a car-length in reverse. I was thinking about lunch, or something - nothing about what I was doing at that point. I pulled on the lever and the transmission went into reverse. It did so without a lurch. But before the car moved at all, something made me step on the brake. Some would argue it was an act of subconscious origin based on what I knew was going on, but I know better. Something made me step on that brake. At the same instant I glanced in the rear-view mirror, and saw with horror that my little girl's feet were just hitting the ground where she had hopped off of the trunk. My little boy then followed. If I had done as usual, I would have run over one or both of them. Of course, both were safe, and we never rode on the outside of the car again, believe that.

I've spent a lot of time perusing quotations of Albert Einstein, and why not? Here is a man that was alive during my own lifetime, inarguably a genius. In so doing, I found that he did not, in fact, believe in a personal god, one that influences our actions directly. But then, he also questioned reality:

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” Since he was always, always theorizing, and since all of my efforts to disprove my own reality have in fact failed, I have no choice but to conclude, in light of all of the evidence before me, that our creator is indeed a personal god, that is, if you ask.

By the way, Albert Einstein was not an atheist of the sort most atheists are. Who among them would say this?

“I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know his thoughts. The rest are details. (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, 2000 p.202)”

If there can be any finalities to this piece at all, consider these:

Our world in our universe is an incredible, astounding, amazing place. I hope you don't miss it.

Everyone must make decisions every day. We are human, and we make mistakes. When your error is huge, the lessons can be hard. They'll be harder still when you ignore simple facts and fail to use your head.

Your personal control center isn't in your pc, and it isn't in your smart phone. It isn't even inside a church, or at some altar. It's inside of you. Whether you choose to believe that God put it there or not, is entirely up to you. You are in possession of your own free will.

Now there's reality for you.

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