Life
Experiences of Bill McDonald
From the Book
"A Spiritual Warrior's Journey"
Asleep at the Wheel
In the spring of
1965, I was just a young man of 19. I had dreamed of traveling and seeing the
world, but I had come from a poor family. I did not have much money, but I was
not going to let that stop me from broadening my personal horizons. I set off on
what must have looked to others as a foolishly-conceived adventure, hitchhiking
across the country from San Francisco to New York City. I was going to catch a
flight out of New York for Europe, which meant that I had a deadline in order to
get on my airplane.
I had been hitchhiking almost nonstop for three days. I only slept
for a few hours when I was in someone's car, and I was very tired. I could
hardly keep my eyes open. The only thing that kept me from falling asleep was
that I was standing on the roadside. There was a cold Indiana wind that was
beating up my body and chilling me inside and out. I was totally exhausted, but
I could not afford to spend a night at a hotel. I needed to keep moving closer
to New York. If I got a ride, I could sleep while the guy drove; anyway that was
my plan.
It must have been around midnight, and I had been standing for a
couple of hours watching car after car pass by me in the darkness. My mind was
thinking about how my own family didn't seem to care where I was or what might
happen to me. I began to feel alone and a little depressed. I wanted to travel
not so much just to see things, but I also realized that I was trying to escape
from my family. It was a very low point in my life. I was cold, tired, and
lonely. I felt that no one loved me. It was the lack of sleep getting to my
normally upbeat and happy self.
Finally, a car pulled over and some guy in a business suit honked
the horn and waved for me to get in. I ran the distance between us in the
darkness and jumped in his warm car. I was looking forward to falling asleep and
just going for a ride to get out of the cold wind. However, when I got in, he
asked me to drive. He said he was very tired, and he needed me to drive so he
could sleep.
I was not in any mental shape to drive, but it was either drive or
keep hitchhiking in the cold, so I figured I could do it. I put my backpack in
the back seat and got in the driver's seat. I pulled back onto the highway and
got the speed of the vehicle up to about 70 mph. The businessman was already
falling asleep as I was moving along the interstate.
I was having a difficult time staying awake. I kept drifting back
and forth between sleep and being awake. After a while, I was not sure if I was
still awake or dreaming. Then, I stopped drifting and fell completely asleep. I
was driving perhaps as fast as 90 or 100 mph when the car left the paved highway
and began to spin around and around, creating a huge cloud of dust. I had
somehow managed to spin the car around more than a half dozen times before it
came to a complete stop—all on its own.
I had done nothing but hang onto the steering wheel. I had not even
applied the brakes. I was now fully awake as I surveyed my surroundings. The
businessman was wide-eyed awake, too. We both stared out the windows. No one
said a word. I could tell he was upset, and my heart was still pumping wildly.
We could see that somehow the car had managed to spin around and
through a dense forest. There were trees all around the car, most were only a
few feet apart. It was impossible for the car to have avoided hitting trees;
they were everywhere and there were no straight lines to drive into or out of
where we found ourselves in this forest.
It seemed that the car had actually spun around and changed
directions several times, and in doing so, it avoided hitting anything. We both
got out of the car to take a closer look around. We could see the tracks and
skid marks that wrapped themselves around several trees. It was an amazing
sight, and neither of us could figure out why we were not dead or seriously
injured from a crash into any one of those trees. There was just no way anyone
could have driven into this forest at any speed, even wide awake and in the
daylight, and not have hit something!
The man was now fully alert. He also was not too happy with my
driving skills, and he moved himself back into the driver's seat. Getting out
from where we were took us several minutes of backing up and pulling forward
just to avoid hitting anything. When we finally pulled out of the woods and onto
the side of the highway, the guy just looked at me, shook his head and said,
"You're one very lucky kid. We should have both been killed back there; somebody
upstairs must really love you!"
His words hit me. Yes, Somebody does, and I drifted off into a
relaxing, peaceful sleep in the back seat of his car.
#
Copyright 1990 - W. H. McDonald Jr.
