Homeward Bound: Part Two

Wow! A Tim Horton's this far south (we are south of Dayton, Ohio). Great! This way we get a reliable and cheap supper - chili and a toasted bagel each. In we go and place our order. Oh, dear. This does not look right. The chili is the same as ever, but the bagel! It is kind-of-heated, but definitely not toasted...And there is no butter! They have just opened and I guess they are not aware of the expectations! I go back to the counter, bagels in hand, and tell the young man - kindly, for his good! - that he will probably have many Canadians stopping there, and that these bagels simply won't do...They have to be brown, and soaked in butter!...Alright! That is taken care of. Dad and I munch our way through our supper contentedly.

We leave in darkness. Early evenings and we will now miss all the most beautiful scenery in Kentucky and Tennessee. Too bad! As we climb in the car, I have a sense of foreboding. Let's pray again, I say to Dad. "Father please take care of us as we drive the rest of the way in the dark. You know we are tired, and our eyesight is not A1. Please keep us from other cars, and other cars away from us. Amen."...And I ask Dad to drive now. But I must stay awake, not sleep, though I am very tired. He might need me....And we enter the highway.

We are now through Cincinnati and have entered Kentucky...Getting there! Oh, more construction! As always...and no shoulder for the next few miles...Alright..But we continue on at seventy miles an hour, as does everyone...Boy, traffic is heavy for this time of night....John, John, watch out! Watch out!...What?...And he sees it - an old van, stalled in the right hand lane, right in our path - no hazards, nowhere to go with the closed shoulder...A man jumps up and down beside it, motioning us away with all his might....Dad intuitively swings into the left lane - empty! And so does the transport behind us as he realizes the danger...And we are past almost before we can think...Safe! And a prayer answered.

But I still cannot get that man out of my mind. Did he survive until a policeman was able to stop traffic flow? Were there others, perhaps children, in the car that he had not had a chance to get out? To me, he looked like a dead man, like a man hanging over a cliff with an unraveling rope...An image I will never forget.