Saturday, December 10, 2011

LDS Witness - #4 Saved from a Dark Street Corner

     When I was a teenager growing up in Portland, Oregon as a high school freshman, was invited to a party by people I thought were my friends. It was on the other side of
     Portland in the west hills, and the hostesses were girls I had known a little from church. My best friend, Dolores, and her boyfriend took me to the party but that was the last I saw of them. I was worried when I learned the girls’ parents were not home. I was suspicious of what some boys from a rival high school were drinking, and I was really alarmed when they turned out the lights and started slow dancing. There was one other girl at the party who didn’t pair off and start dancing. I told her I was going to leave and she too wanted to leave.
     My dad had an extra job on Saturday nights and my mom didn’t drive. We were on our own. We had to take a bus to downtown Portland and transfer to a second bus. Then I had to choose between riding this bus several blocks away from my normal stop and walking about 8 blocks home on a darkened street, or getting off at my normal stop and waiting an hour for a third bus which would stop right across the street from my house. Caroline had to transfer to another bus so we split up. Even though it was about midnight, I elected to wait an hour for the bus that came closest to my home.
     The intersection where I got off had a grocery store with a single light bulb burning in the back. It was on the northwest corner. On the southwest corner stood a small drugstore with a doorway cutting across the corner with a recessed entry. The southeast corner had a very dark gas station and the northeast corner had a beer tavern, which was still open. That was where I had to catch the third bus. I decided to wait in the shadows of the drugstore, where I could watch the oncoming traffic and would have plenty of time to cross the street and catch the bus.
     I waited about a half hour in the doorway. Then a car pulled up at the curb next to the drugstore. Two big men got out and started walking toward me, asking questions about the bus schedule. It may have been my imagination but I think they wore big tan trenchcoats and big floppy hats. I did not want to get trapped in the doorway. I thought if I went over to the tavern that there might be other people there, which meant safety in numbers to me. I stood at the curb waiting for a car to make a left turn, then I would run. Just then the car stopped right in the middle of its turn and a young male voice called out, “Lois, do you want a ride?” I certainly did! Though I didn’t recognize who called, if he knew me, that was good enough! When I got closer I saw that it was my girlfriend Dolores’ brother and his neighbor friend who were a couple of years older than me. Gratefully, I climbed into the backseat and they took me straight home.
     The miracle was that if I had not been standing on that curb at that very minute, they would have driven right past me. I still wonder, how did they recognize me on that dark corner?
     I see it as a blessing of protection from a loving Heavenly Father who recognized that I had left a bad party. He knew my immediate needs and saved me from who knows what?