Angels Unaware by Helen Chappell
The road is rough but beautiful. It probably started out as a deer trail, twisting and winding around corners and up and down rises, over old stream beds and through woods and open pastures. Often, it’s a path through overhanging trees. And always, the deep, deep ditches with tiny shoulders that make a narrow two-lane asphalt strip an obstacle course. I’ve seen vehicles down in those ditches. I’ve seen the wreckers pull them out, I’ve seen the deep muddy scars where some poor soul was rescued. But I’d never slid into a ditch before that day. I thought I was charmed growing up, learning to avoid those ditches like homemade sin. Which guaranteed karma would hand me a ditch. You remember when we had about two weeks of daily rain? When there were f loods everywhere and the ditches overf lowed, running like creeks down the side of the shoulderless backroads? Yeah, that time. When I was rescued by angels unawares. And it all had to do with heroes. There I was, driving up the road, thinking about Neil Armstrong. You remember Neil, first man on the moon. For some reason, the
late hero astronaut had been passing through my mind after I saw a photograph of him in his Apollo space suit, heading for the moon. He was young, grinning, getting ready for launch into an unknown space that summer day in 1969. That photo had snagged my attention recently when I was looking for something else. Armstrong was a bona fide hero who had gotten his pilot’s license before he could drive, f lown bombing missions, risked his life as a test pilot and was designated to be the first human on the moon just a few hours after that photo was taken. He was a hero, and that day I ditched, it seemed like heroes were thin on the ground. Neil had a baby face. Not ugly or anything, just young. This hotshot guy looked so young. Which led to me, always curious, to pondering 9
