Another run-in with fate with the old 1966 Ford Fairlane 500. By the time I was a senior in high school I had gotten too comfortable with the Fairlane. It had a clutch and a stick shifter on the steering column. On the six mile trip from high school to the farm I would take the back roads - actually that is all there was. When there was not sports practice, which was not too often with me as I dabbled in many high school sports, I would beat it home as there was always something to do around the farm. There was never a boring day.
One day I was bounding down the farm road that connected the two main drags of County Road N, and State Highway 59 - at least main drags in our world. I was digging for something on the floor of the passenger side - who knows what I was looking for. The road had gone from a well kept short cut local secret, to a rather well traveled route because a farmer had build a mobile home park on the corner of his farm. It was a big well-kept, as well as popular trailer park. Mobile home parks were frowned upon in our area - must be something to do with the old stuffy Protestant property owner culture. However, if one trailer spot did open, it got filled quickly with people just trying to make a life the best they could. In the three short years I had been driving it went from a desolate trek to a well traveled road. But, it was still a shoulderless, winding, bumpy, farm road.
Why I looked up, to this day I do not know. Just a hundred yards from me was a poor young woman that just came over a knoll heading straight for me as I had entered her lane. I jerked the old cumbersome Fairlane steering wheel and I saw her disgusted look as we passed just inches apart. Why I did not plow into her I do not know. Had she been the type to be aggressive I am sure anyone else would have planted both middle fingers my way as we passed. She shook her head like a disgusted older sister and just kept on going.
Note: This blog "Fate Fairies" - book version Category is a work in progress. The original vignettes are being edited for book form. Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Fate Fairies Page for an ordered chronology of the book vignettes (chapters).
