My Thanksgiving Miracle Story

Hello! So, do you believe in miracles? Have you ever had one happen to you where it was a situation where it was more than just coincidence, more than just happen stance? Like it felt like you were guided, like it was divine intervention. Have you ever had that? I did. My mom and I did. So, I'm going to tell you that story.

This happened in 1985. I was 17 years old and my mom and I were living in Houston, Texas. Houston is a great city. It's a lot of fun. There's a lot of things to do but my mom was just having a hard time finding a job that paid well enough for us to afford living there. She decided that we're going to move back to Neosho Missouri (my hometown) and it's the day before Thanksgiving. So, we load up our car and this car that we had was an orange Subaru and this thing was a rust bucket. It had a hole in the back floorboard and the ignition was dangling. You could literally put in any key in to start the car. And mom never worried about it getting stolen because no one's going to want this car. Plus, it would overheat if we got caught in traffic.

We head out, the car kept overheating, like I said total rust bucket, so we pulled into a Denny's to wait until it cooled off. The car did this all the time because traffic in Houston was bumper to bumper so it would overheat. We waited at Denny's until about 10 PM when the traffic had died down enough for us to be able to leave without stopping. The car is loaded up; back seat and the trunk were completely full. It's really cold out about 40 degrees. We were wearing coats but the hole in the floorboard made it freezing cold in the car so we had blankets piled on us as well.

We're about 40 or 50 miles north of Houston when all of a sudden, my mom and I heard a load KERCHUNK sound. We look at each other like "What was that?" Then the car lurched down on the back driver side and sparks start flying everywhere. Mom maneuvers the car over to the side of the road. We get out and see the back driver side tire is completely gone. We immediately thought "Oh god, did anyone get hit?". Because this is a busy freeway. We turn around, by now it's about 11pm, and look around and no one's around. "Whew, what a relief no one is hurt." We look for the tire, and it wasn't around.

Well, what are we going to do now? We're in the middle of nowhere. It's cold. We look down the road, and we see a light for a gas station about a mile, maybe mile and a half down from us. It's late at night and they may not be open, but we have to give it a try. Maybe there is a pay phone we can use to call a tow. Back then there weren't any huge travel plazas like you see today, most of them were mom and pop gas stations. We start walking and it's freezing. Gosh, it's cold. We're walking along and we get there, walk up to the door, there's a sign that says closed, but the lights were on and I saw someone in there.

We start banging on the door and the lady that was in there was ignoring us, of course, because she's closed. Why would she open the door? But we were persistent. We kept banging on the door. So finally, she comes up and she's irritated. She opens the door and sees me, she says, "Honey, we're closed!" My mom steps up and she goes, "I am so sorry" and she explains the situation." The lady goes, "Oh, you poor things. Come on in." So, we go in and we ask if we could use her phone to call a tow. She says, "Sure but my brother-in-law is actually a tow truck driver" She goes, "Let me give him a call. He'll come and get you." So, she did. And he came and got us about 20 30 minutes later. While we were waiting, she tells us that she's usually closed by 9:00. And the only reason why she was even there was because she was doing inventory.

He shows up. We go and get the car, and he takes it to the car repair shop that he actually owns. So, he's the only tow truck driver and the car repair place for this little town. He then takes us to the Holiday Inn, their only hotel. My mom's feeling a little worried because we were so poor. We were so beyond poor that we couldn't even afford to go out to eat. We hadn't eaten anything since that morning. And we were not going to be able to afford to stop somewhere. All she had was money for gas and that was it. And so, my mom was like, "I don't think I can afford this". The rooms cost about $60 to $70. And the guy's like, "Don't you worry, I talked to them about your situation." We're like, "Okay, you know the people that work at Holiday Inn?" And he goes, "Oh, sure. They're good friends of mine. Went to high school with them." Small towns lol, Neosho is the same way. Everyone pretty much knows everyone else, so we get it. So, we go in to check in and the person behind the counter is like, "Oh, yeah. We were told about you and don't worry; we're going to give you the holiday rate." So, our room was only $35.

We're automatically assuming that we're going to be there two or three days. The tow truck driver, he said "Nope, we're going to get you home tomorrow. Tomorrow's Thanksgiving. We're going to get you home." We get to our room, we go to bed, we're exhausted by now. It's like 12:30, 1:00 in the morning. We're so tired. We get up in the morning and we're waiting around for the phone call about the car. And I leave the room. You know, I'm only 17, so I'm a little bit bored and decide to go for a little walk around. I go back to our room and Mom is on the phone. She hangs up and tells me the car is ready. They're coming to get us. We go down, we check out, guy picks us up, he takes us to the car repair place, and he says to us that they found the tire. They went and looked for it, and they found it and it was completely intact, bolts and all. All they had to do was slip it on and tighten it up and that's it. Mom asked, "How much do I owe you?" And he's like, "Nope. Nope." He goes, "You are getting home for Thanksgiving, no matter how late it is, that is payment enough." And we're like, "Wow! Thank you!" Then he tells us, "You know, you guys got really lucky because most cars when they lose a tire like that, the car flips." He said that we didn't flip because we had all that stuff in the car in the back seat and in the trunk. The weight of it kept us from flipping. So that saved us. We were amazed to say the least.

We thanked him and his workers and got back on the road. We got to Neosho Missouri later that night around 9 or 10pm. We arrived at my Aunt June's house (Mom's older sister). Everybody was still there waiting for us, and we got to eat dinner. By then we were beyond starving because we hadn't been able to eat for a whole day. We had our Thanksgiving dinner.

To this day I am still amazed at how well everything lined up that night. To those people that helped us out from the lady at the store, to her brother-in-law the tow truck driver, to the Holiday Ann giving us a "holiday rate discount", to the employees at the car repair place willing to go and look for this tire on Thanksgiving. And then the miracle of no one got hurt. That tire could have killed somebody, and it didn't.

That night to me was a miracle. It truly felt like divine intervention.

That's all I have for you today. Thank you for reading my story. Take care and be well.