Excited by our wrestling team’s win over the Amanda Aces, five of us crammed into my buddy’s 1957 VW Beetle to return to Sugar Grove. As Don struggled to start the tiny motor, the rest of us, out of sheer silliness, began to rock side to side. Amazed at how easily it tipped, we continued—hoping to lift a wheel into the air. (Stupid, I know, but so typical of high school guys.) Finally yielding to Don’s repeated threat—“Stop before you break something!—one among us glibly suggested, “Wouldn’t it be wild if we rolled this car on the way home!”
Don, now more than a little peeved, hissed, “Yeah…and if we do, my dad will kill me!”
It was at that moment Roy Orbison’s 64 hit, crackled from the AM radio’s paper speaker and all five of us broke into full song, “Pretty woman, walkin’ down the street…pretty woman, the kind I’d like to meet!”
In Lancaster, we topped the Broad Street overpass and headed south toward Sugar Grove. I noticed a silver 59’ Chevy Biscayne slowly approaching Memorial Drive from Old Logan Road.
I remember it well because I was in the back seat squished between two heavyweight wrestlers providing me an unblocked forward view of the tiny windshield. The two I sat between were so large they wedged my shoulders into a forward V, causing my arms to hang suspended like a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
I swatted the driver’s shoulder with the back of my hand and nervously suggested, “I don’t think he sees us!”
As we drew near it became obvious the driver was a very small, very old, grey-haired man. He seemed to look our way as we bore down on the intersection, which caused Don to assume he would slow to a stop. Don later confessed he had the VW floored coming off the downhill grade—he noticed how erratically the speedometer needle wobbled between 35 & 40. (By the way; In1957 a Volkswagen boasted a mere 36 horsepower, less than my neighbors zero-turn mower!)
Then, just as we passed the point of no return, the silver Chevy simply continued out onto the highway, directly into our path. Don, in a last-second evasive move, jerked the wheel hard to the left. Just as we had eerily predicted the VW’s forward momentum and over-weighted payload caused the little car, like a football, to begin a series of slow, forward spiral rolls. We slid past the nose of the Biscayne, across the median, across both unoccupied northbound lanes and finally came to rest upside down against the corner of Amos’ Tire Shop.
Amazingly, in spite of no seat belts, the five of us crawled out completely unharmed. The silver Biscayne completed his turn onto Memorial Drive and continued north. To this day, I’m convinced he never saw us—neither as we approached nor when we squirted past with our wheels in the air.
Looking back, we realized the overtaxed VW actually saved our bacon. Instead of responding nimbly to Don’s hard left turn, which would have sent us head on into the rock wall still prominent at that location, we began an energy-diffusing forward spiral that progressively slowed our momentum until we rested peacefully against the corner of the tire shop. We were so tightly packed inside it was impossible to be flung about. What could have been a disastrous crash resulted in little more than a dizzying thrill ride.
Although we walked away without a scratch, the VW didn’t fare as well. Like Colonel Potter, who pulled his service revolver and mercifully shot his Jeep, the VW had to be put down.
Life can turn upside down on us in a heartbeat. The Bible mentions how unpredictable it is—
“Without warning your life can turn upside-down, and who knows how or when it might happen?” Proverbs 24:22
Whenever I think back on that event in my life, I’m reminded how our Heavenly Father—like that old VW—paid the ultimate sacrifice to save my life.
I want to remind you that Jesus Christ carried us to a place of safety at his own peril. The Scripture says in 1 John 4:10, “This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.”
Read Ron’s column, Simple Faith, each Saturday on the Faith Page (page 3) of the Lancaster Eagle Gazette, or visit www.lancastereaglegazette.com.