Angels Unawares

January 30, 2018

Angels come in all shapes and sizes, and are mostly wingless. This afternoon on a trip to visit our granddaughter at college, Linda and I ran into an angel in dirty Carhartts and an equally dirty baseball cap. This angel stood about five foot ten, weighed maybe 220 pounds, and sported a scruffy beard. Not very angel-ly looking. 

We had just started crossing a bridge on the expressway when I heard what sounded like a jack hammer on cement. There was a road crew off to the side of the road at the edge of the bridge, so I didn’t think any more about it till about halfway across the bridge, the hammering sound wasn’t receding into the background as per the Doppler Effect. At the other side of the bridge was an exit, so I pulled off to the side of the road, got out, and looked under the car. Not seeing anything, I got back in and started up. We hadn’t gone fifty feet before the hammering sound began. 

If I drove slowly enough, it quieted down, so we crept into a truck stop. I got out and looked again, and this time saw that the air dam underneath the motor had come loose and was dangling, hitting the road, scooping up snow, and making a racket. Note to self: Garages  that work on heavy trucks don’t have lifts. I don’t know what they do when they need to change a tire, but no one had any kind of lift to get my car in the air high enough to deal with the offending piece of plastic. This isn’t just speculation; all three truck stops I visited told me the same story. But they did get one thing right. They sent me (slowly) down the road to a small independent shop on a side road where no one who wasn’t looking for it would think to look.

There was music playing on a radio, so I knocked at the door. No answer, so I pushed it open and peered inside. This was difficult to do, since it was bright outside, and half the interior lights didn’t seem to be working. It was dingy and dirty, with old parts strewn all over the place, a stack of worn out tires in the back, and a couple cars and a rusty truck squeezed into a single bay of the garage. No one was home.

Going next door to the house and knocking on the door produced a slight rapping on a window to my right, where a young woman was motioning me around to the back. When I got there, our angel was coming down the steps. “Just got home from work,” he said casually. “What do you need?” When I told him our problem, he said, “Pull it up to the second bay,” as he disappeared inside. A minute later, the door magically rose on its track; he motioned me in, and I pulled up before he lowered the door behind me.

Dragging an ancient floor jack behind him, he positioned it underneath the frame rail behind the front left tire and started pumping. The car rose, precariously leaning to the left while he grabbed his scooter and looked underneath. “You want me to just pull this off?” he asked incredulously. 

“If you think you can fix it, that would be great! I responded. He pulled his way clear of the car, got up and dragged a second jack to the right side. In a moment, the whole front end was dancing on air while he scraped snow to the floor and surveyed his project. Linda and I stood in wonder, looking around the garage. A row of deer antlers was nailed to a beam. I didn’t actually count them, but there were at least a couple dozen. Rows of belts hung from nails on the opposite wall, against which leaned a couple mammoth tool boxes. Tools were spread out on the floor beneath the antlers, and a pile of junk obscured the man door in the back. Bins filled with nuts and bolts were stacked behind the junk. A huge torpedo heater roared its warmth towards the car, and a tiny office with a desk piled high with papers was between the bays. Above the desk were posted the rates, among which was $50/hour; reasonable enough. The place was absolutely filthy, and reminded me of some of the old time garages we frequented back in the ‘60s. Except for the proprietor, this place was a step back in time.

Twenty minutes after welcoming us into his shop, he was done. “What do I owe you?” I asked. 

“How ‘bout ten dollars?” I couldn’t believe my ears. 

“It’s worth more than that!”

“Naw...it wasn’t much.”

I gave him twenty five, and should have made it fifty. It was worth that to get back on the road so quickly. Next time I go by there, I’m going to stop in and give him some more as a surprise. 

I never got his name. Maybe that’s fitting. Jacob wrestled with an angel who refused to divulge his name. There was no wrestling match today, but I encountered an angel just the same. Maybe tomorrow, I can be a similar angel to someone in need. I hope so. I’ll be thankful if I can, just as I am thankful tonight for this scruffy angel in dirty Carhartts, who ministered to us more than he realized.