By
These stories are a compilation of 40 put on a tape
in 1981, 185 (includes the 40) in Miracles In My Life in 1991, and the
remaining that have happened since. It’s like putting 3 diaries together. I
tried to group them in various ways; therefore they do not match
chronologically. Unless there is a specific date mentioned, ‘‘last week’’ could
have been ten years ago. To me the important thing is not when they happened,
but that they happened.
Once, when I was just beginning to believe there was a God that interacted, cared, or (at least) even realized that I existed, I was talking with my wife. She said, "Don’t you ever listen to God?" I said, "What are you talking about . . Listen to God? I say my prayers." She said, "Do you hear God?" and I replied, "No." She said, "Well, when you get through praying, just listen." So I promised to do that. That night I knelt down by my bed and, after saying a few prayers (the general prayers I usually said), I added, "Lord, I’m through, now it’s your turn!" and I waited. I really didn’t expect to hear any voices, and I didn’t, but a verse of scripture came to my mind. I don’t know if I had read it in the immediate time before, or if God or my subconscious said, "and thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul and mind." I said, "Lord, did I say that, or did you? Am I talking to myself, or can you communicate with me?" I thought, "Lord, I don't understand." Then, something told me to turn it backwards, and I said, "Okay, I've searched for answers everywhere on everything else, do you mean for me to turn that verse backwards? I don't understand, Thou shall love the Lord with all thy mind, soul and heart." Mind, soul and heart were the three things that impressed me there and I said, "Lord, I don't understand. Is that a message? Could that possibly be a message?" I said, "H S M . . . heart, soul and mind, M S H, . . . mind, soul and heart, S, . . . MeS . . . Mes H, . . . Message, that's message!" I said. That sort of startled me, I asked God, "Was that a message?" and then, phonetically, MSH said "message."
I got up off my knees and talked to my wife, and during the conversation there was some mention of a possibility that God might build a castle in the orange grove where we lived. I said, "God can do anything he wants. If he wanted, he could build a castle in this orange grove." That was insignificant to me at the time, but I remember saying it. The next morning as I began to work, while pouring a cup of coffee, a workman came up to me and said, "Archie, you're sort of sprucing up that house you live in. You've almost got it looking like a castle in an orange grove."
I thought to myself,
"Is it possible that God could not only communicate with me directly, but
he could use people like the workman who mentioned the same thing that I had
the night before?" Then, all of a sudden, my life began to change. . . I
began to hunt for answers, and I began to hunt for things that might be
significant. It was like asking God "If you're real, show me!" or,
"If you're real, walk on water, or do a miracle before my eyes!" but
that never happened.
One day going to work I was down and thinking of a lot of bad things that had happened. I was not getting any answers or any help. I was crying and complaining to God. I said, "Lord, it just seems like the whole world is on my shoulders," and this was the gist of my whole conversation all the way to work.
I walked into the building, reached for my timecard, punched it and put it in the right hand rack. There, tacked upon a safety board directly in front of me was a picture that signified to me, the Ark of the Covenant (the one piece of gold that Moses saw on Sinai which is the most precious thing in heaven). Below that picture were some words. I'm sure they had been there for months, but I'd never read them or they had no significance. The words below that picture said "Get help when the load's too heavy."
Later on, I asked my boss if I could take that picture down. I tacked it up inside my work cabinet door, so that if I ever got down, I could glance back at that poster and remember that time and message.
One morning at work I made a pot of coffee and it just seemed like everything was going wrong. Everything was straining and testing my ability to stay calm. I thought, "Lord, it's a test - I can accept it as a trial." So, later on in the morning, I went to get a cup of coffee and there was only one cup left. Now, our policy was that if anyone came up to get a cup of coffee and there was only one more cup left in the pot, you were the one that would pour your cup and then make another pot of coffee. No big deal, so, I made the coffee again. Maybe an hour later, I came back for another cup and, again, one cup was left in the pot. I laughed, and said, "Lord, I know this is just a test" and at that moment the P.A. system went off with some sort of noise "womp, womp, womp," and the announcer said, "Now hear this, now hear this, this is a test of the Eastern Test Range Early Warning System." I said, "Thank you Lord for warning me."
One day I got in the company truck in which I hauled lumber. It was always kept clean and neat. As I crawled in, there was a white slip of paper lying on the seat, and I said "Lord, I wonder if that has a message on it?" I picked it up and read it. It said, "isolated diaphragm . . . look upstairs." Obviously, it was a note from a dispatcher to tell somebody where to look for a particular part in the warehouse. I laughed and thought, "Well, it might have another meaning, Lord, but I think this is a message to me. I don't know how or when you'll do it, but this will have significance, I'm sure." Then, I forgot about it. This happened on Wednesday or Thursday, and during the following weekend I helped put a roof on someone's home. The next Monday, I was at work, when about lunch time, while walking through the hangar, I heard this 'click, click, click,' at my feet and I thought, "It sounds like I have taps on my shoes." I lifted one shoe and, there, stuck into the middle of the heel was a huge, round roofing tack, the head of which was about the size of a quarter. If it had gone another eighth of an inch deeper, it would have reached my heel. I then remembered the piece of paper that said, "isolated diaphragm . . . look upstairs." I thought, "It would be just like the Lord to do just exactly the opposite," but I never thought of looking on the soles of my shoes, which was about as low as I could look.
One morning in the spring I couldn't decide whether to wear a shirt or a sweater, so in my haste I grabbed a sweater. I said, "Well, I'll probably have to do some heavy work (like tear down the scaffold), and I'll perspire too much and I won't be able to take the sweater off. Then I thought to myself, as I was driving to work, "No, that's not possible. I just put the scaffold up two days ago and we always go several weeks before I can tear it down again." I got to work and at around 10:00 or 11:00, my boss came by. He said, “Archie, I want you to go out to the Pad and tear down the scaffold you built." I asked "Today? I just put it up two days ago!" He said, "I know, but we have a fast turn-around." I hopped in the truck and I started talking to the Lord. I was down (and it wasn't just the fact that I was wearing the sweater), I was saying, "Lord, I don't feel up to that job." (That was the hardest part of my job - building and tearing down the scaffold.) I said, "You know that I didn't want to do that today, but I will. I'll tear down the scaffold, because that's my job." I pulled in on the Pad and backed up onto the ramp. As I neared the scaffold area, I suddenly found that all my scaffolding had been taken down and piled neatly for me to just load aboard the truck. This had never happened before. I sort of smiled and said, "Thank you, Lord."
I drove to the Publix grocery store to get some Easy-Off oven cleaner September 14, 1996. After having some difficulty finding the cleaning products (my wife usually does the shopping), the Easy-Off eluded me among the many items displayed. Finally giving up in the area I was looking, I turned around to look on the shelves behind me. I laughed when my eyes immediately fell on Easy-On, a spray starch. Directly across the isle from Easy-On, I found Easy-Off.
Since this was the only item I was purchasing, the grocery clerk asked me if I would clean her oven too.
One
day in the hangar, I was thinking and searching for answers. Ezekiel 22:30 had made a big impression on me
when I'd started going to church. I'd
read the scripture that said, basically, "I looked for a man to fill the
gap, and I found none", and I had asked the Lord, "Was there some way
that I could help? Was there anything
that, as a man, I could do? What was the purpose of my creation? Was I some kind of a toy, or was I precious
in God's sight?" I began to wonder,
"Maybe there is some kind of a gap between man and God." Then, I asked, "Lord, is there a gap? Is there really a gap? Do you need a man to fill a gap? You said it in scripture." I said, "Lord, if there is a gap, can I
help? Is there any way I can
help?" Just at that moment, the
mechanic that worked next to me shouted out, "Hey, Archie, would you help
me close the gap in this door?"
There was a three-foot-wide gap in the hangar doors that he wanted me to
help close, because the wind was blowing in.
I was sitting in a cafe downtown and doing a lot of thinking. I had come to the conclusion that I wasn't able to reach anyone with any kind of a message. I wanted to show that God was more than someone who wrote the Bible or created the world, and was then just sitting out on a star somewhere. I said, "Lord, it just looks like I'm on an empty bus, and I'm the driver." A moment later, the waitress that was nearby turned to me and said, "Did you see that bus go by? It was empty!"
I was sitting in the Ranch House (about broke). As I was figuring up what I owed, I said, "Lord, I need a thousand dollars." At that moment, across the room, someone said, "A thousand dollars!" From the ensuing laughter, it must have been the punch line of a joke.
September 18, 1996, I went to the Netscape search engine and typed the word “God” on my computer. When the result came back, it read: “No matches found. Your search is too general. Be more specific. Instead of “Dog”, use “Cocker Spaniel”. I thought, “Should I search for “big God” or “little God”?
A few weeks later, I ran across this joke in the October 1996 Reader’s Digest:
Did you hear about the insomniac dyslexic agnostic? He stayed up all night wondering if there really was a dog.
One-day years ago, I was so depressed that I said, "Lord, everybody's got their hands out. Everyone wants something for nothing." I went to the post office that morning with this on my mind. As I opened my mailbox and reached for the mail, I said, "Who's looking for a hand out, Lord?" When I opened a church bulletin, two hands on the cover were reaching towards me, palms up.
At one point I was very broke financially, and quite despondent. I was thinking, "everybody's looking for a handout." When, at that moment, a person came to my home that had previously tried to con me. As she started to get back in her car to leave, she asked me for a cigarette. Just then, a transient walked by, turned to me and said, "Hey! Can I have one of those too?"
For years I have been saddened by the loss of my son when he was nine years old. He was killed in a bicycle/automobile accident. Because he had traveled a certain highway to the hospital, I felt, that if it was in my power, or if God would do this one-day, that road - (the price for my son dying) would be paved with gold. It would be a golden highway - paved with bricks of gold. That is what I had in mind. A year or two later I was working on a house, as a matter of fact it was General Carlson's house, and during some time one day, General Carlson brought this map to me and said, "See this, it is a 40 year old map of this area" and he casually made the comment "This road," pointing to highway 50, "had originally been proposed to be bricked." This was the same road that I had in mind.
I
built a house for a retired Army General.
I was still working on the house at Christmastime, so my wife baked the
General's son a can of cookies. The
following year my wife said to me one day, "Archie, since you're going to
My daughter asked me to go to the store while I was downtown and pick up three things: bread, sugar and noodles. By the time I got in the car and started to town, the only two I could remember were bread and sugar. I said, Lord," I can remember the first two things, but I've totally forgotten what the third thing is . . . maybe, someway you'll show me, for I just can't remember." I went to a cafe, and I'd never done this before, but I decided that, along with some coffee, I'd have a bowl of the soup of the day. The girl brought the soup, and I took two or three bites before I realized that it was noodle soup. At that moment, I remembered the noodles.
One night I was in the Citrus Lounge singing with a band. Buying some cashew nuts flashed in my mind but I disregarded the idea, especially since I was low on cash. A moment later I walked over to Joanie, the owner (now my wife). She looked up and asked, "Would you like some cashew nuts?" She had spread a newly opened package on our table.
My wife Joan was planning to go grocery shopping, so she made out a grocery list which included some items for a birthday party. Unfortunately, as she entered the store, she realized she left the list at home. After loading everything she could remember she needed, she felt there was something she had forgotten. She had not remembered any birthday items and was still searching her mind when a large balloon came drifting towards her along the floor. Just as it reached her, it rose to eye level, rotated a half turn to display HAPPY BIRTHDAY written across it.
While working at General Dynamics, someone was picking me up for work each day. One morning I went out to stand for my ride in my usual place. I had always stuck my fountain pen onto my badge that was clipped to my shirt. As my ride approached some railroad tracks about fifteen feet away, my pen fell off my badge onto the ground. I had had so many experiences that almost invariably I said, "This is no accident, there's a reason. Why, Lord, why did my pen drop? There's got to be a reason." Just then my ride stopped, and as I opened the door, the driver was reaching down on the floorboard. I asked him, "What are you doing?" He said, "Well, just now as I came over the railroad tracks this thing up over the center of the headboard - (it may have been the light cover) - fell off as I crossed the railroad tracks." He said, "It's never fallen off before.." And I smiled to myself. It was just another confirmation that God was saying; "I can do two things at one time and let you see both of them. I'm just letting you know that I'm in control of two things at one time." My pen fell off of my shirt at exactly the same time that the cover fell off the truck that had never fallen before.
I was standing in line at Morrison’s waiting to eat. Two gentlemen walked up behind me and one turned to the other and said, "I wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole." I thought to myself, "Lord, that must be significant." A couple of hours later I walked into the Ranch House. Four waitresses were laughing as I sat down and one turned to the others and said, "I wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole." As I left the restaurant I was thinking about those two incidents. I said, "Lord, that was two ten foot poles." Just then a car passed me on the left. There were two long poles sticking out the right rear window, about 10 feet long.
When I began years ago looking for answers, I would say to a person, "To show you something like the interior of an automobile, I would first have to show you the door handle. That would be a starting point." I said, "When looking at an automobile and showing it, the first thing you'd want to do would be to find the door handle." This was an example I gave occasionally. I had this on my mind one day as I went to my car and reached for the driver's door handle. The handle came off in my hand. I drove that old 1938 Chevy with the door handle off for several months.
In
a house in
I
was working in
One morning as I left for work, I clipped a small Phillips type screwdriver into my shirt pocket. It had a valve stem remover on the top. This had been in my garage for several years, but I had never carried it with me to work. As I stepped out of my truck at the job site, a laborer asked me if I had a valve stem remover.
A few days later, having lost my chalk box, I went to the store and bought another. As I got out of my truck the next morning, one of the workers asked me if I had a chalk box.
One day I was coming home from work, and I stopped at a red light. Facing me, a truck was stopped at the light. The driver of the truck was a man with very long hair. I saw him shake his head violently, and thought to myself, "look at that hair shake." Just at that moment the radio began a commercial about a hair salon called "Hair Shake."
I drove my car down beside a lake to one of my favorite thinking spots, (to get away and be quiet, where I can observe nature and I can think and talk to God). As I pulled in under this oak tree I noticed some trash and bottles around, and I made sure that as I drove my wheels didn't hit any of them. I stopped under the tree and turned off the engine. I just sort of sighed and said, " Isn't it nice Lord, you can reach me anywhere, any way - but it's just nice to be here. It's so peaceful and quiet." Just then - "pow" this loud noise startled me. I thought one of my tires had blown. But apparently, I had pulled up directly on top of a bottle that was covered with leaves. Just at the moment that I said, "Isn't it nice and peaceful,” there was this explosion under my tire.
While
driving to work in
My wife is familiar with many of these happenings in my life and things happen to her like the St. Jude medal. For her whole life she had a habit of looking into her cup before she poured something to drink for fear of a bug being in that glass or cup. One day she thought, "This morning I am not going to look in this cup for a bug!" Having always looked before, it was very hard for her not to look into the cup before she poured herself a cup of coffee. She took the cup and sat down. As she started to take a drink, there was a moth floating in her coffee. For all her life she had looked into her cup and not found something, but the one time she did not look, there was a moth.
I
was leaving a
One Christmas Joan made up a gift package to give to her sister, which consisted of a number of types of cheeses, crackers, and sausages,. When she gave the gift that day, her sister sort of smiled. Her sister then gave my wife a package and it consisted of exactly the same things, an assortment of cheeses, crackers, and sausages.
I was mowing my grass in the summer. When I finished, I walked into the screened room in the back and sat down on a chair. Relaxed, I thought to myself, "Boy, this is nice, this screened room is nice. None of the insects from the outside can get in." At that moment a bee stung me on the ankle. It had come in with me on my clothing.
In 1980 my daughter was living with me, and at Christmastime she received a Christmas card from her mother and a Christmas card from her mother-in-law. They were identical.
June 26, 1992, needing a door louver for a
job at the
That afternoon, thinking that the smoke alarm in the office might be connected to the base fire station, I wanted to make sure I didn’t set off an alarm, since I had to disconnect it. This had happened before on jobs I was on. I called and was told it was not connected. Just as I cut the wires, a fire truck siren started. They were going to another place.
While setting up my computer with a local provider, Quantum, I was told that I needed to select a code name or ‘handle’ that I would be known by. I told the sales person I needed a few minutes to think about that. He replied, “While you think about it, I’ll get a cup of coffee.” I said, “I’ll get one too and we’ll be coffee mates.”
When I got back on the phone, I told him I had decided on the word ‘COFFEE MATE.’ Then, I glanced at my Packard Bell computer., it was named ‘Pack-Mate.’
A few months later I was driving up to my business. On the side of the road by a swap shop, was a bunch of camper tops. One thought lead to another and I said to myself "It would be hard to find the right size camper top. If you were looking for one you'd have to measure your pick-up length and width. There are so many different sizes of pick-up beds that maybe it would be hard to find one that was just the right size. But I've never seen a pick-up truck with the wrong size camper on it - one too short, one too long etc." At that moment I looked over at the on-coming traffic. Meeting me was a pick-up truck with a camper top a foot shorter than it's bed.
When
I was just a child in
The
next day we decided to take my mother and father driving. We went into
I had just finished writing a poem about my father as a young man. He bought a horse from a mail carrier. "A fine horse, but sometimes he wanted to stop at mailboxes," my father remarked. I walked into Andy's and sat on a barstool. There, beside me, was an old man, unshaven, that came in quite often. I had other things on my mind, so I said to myself, "I won't bother with this man, He has nothing to tell me or show me and I'm not interested in him." Then I heard the old man mumble to himself, "You know, that horse stopped at all the mailboxes." I had never ever spoken to that man.
My father, bless his heart, is in his own world. It’s a TV world and he loves it. It’s not unusual for him to talk out loud to himself. That’s why I gave it no mind when I walked past his bedroom door and heard him exclaiming, response “Yeah, it’s the paint - that’s what it is,” in response to a “Perry Mason” or “Murder She Wrote” drama unfolding.
Someone was ringing the front door bell and I had to get the keys to open the locked door. As I walk towards the door to unlock it, I was trying to separate the red painted door key from the one next to it. They are stuck together. My wife had repainted it the night before.
I was
replacing the roof on my house and, while felting, I wound up four inches short
of having enough tar paper, so I just plastered that with masking. I
thought to myself, "Lord, that's a miracle."
A few days
later as I was finishing up the shingles on the roof, I wondered if I was going
to have enough. I had saved all my cuts from the sides to crown the
ridgeline. I had exactly enough shingles to do the whole roof of the
house. Not a third of a shingle left and not a third short.
JUST ENOUGH
PIPE
To mount
an alarm out side my house under the eve, I drilled a hole through the masonry
and placed an electrical box there. I then replaced a single switch box
in my garage with a double box. Now all I needed to do was connect the
two with a piece of electrical conduit about six feet long with a 90-degree
bend, making its height about 4 ˝ feet. I thought, “I don’t think I have
any scrap conduit so I’ll go buy a piece.” I then glanced into a corner
of the garage and saw a single piece of bent conduit. I did not have to
cut or bend it; it fit perfectly. It’s still there.
JUST ENOUGH TRIM
I built
a medical clinic in Daytona several years ago. The last piece of ceiling
trim I nailed up was the last scrap piece I had. I did not have to cut
it.
JUST ENOUGH
GAS
Two weeks
after coming back from my trip to Eufala, I received
my first check since my vacation. I had been talking with the Lord about the
way He handled me. I always had to get right down to the last dollar;
that was God's way of proving that He had resources to the end. As I
walked out of the hangar with my paycheck in my pocket, and not a penny to my
name, I said, "Lord, this is just like You, I'll probably run out of gas
and coast into the first station." After that I got in my car and
started driving. I had other things on my mind, and this did not cross my
mind again until the motor started sputtering and then finally quit. I
was about 100 feet short of the first gas station between work and town.
I coasted into the station.
In
October of 1979, two years after the "message", I was taking my son
to
I went to work one morning and turned
to the mechanic next to me and said, "If God wanted to, He could turn the
oceans into gas and look for someone with a match." A couple of hours later I was listening to
the radio when the news came on. The
announcer said that a Cuban refugee had boarded an airliner, thrown gasoline on
a stewardess and threatened to strike a match.
Once I was thinking about the above story when I then
walked out to my back porch to smoke.
My lighter would not work. It was out of fluid.
I was driving to town about 7:00 in the evening. I was near a restaurant named Kelly's. All of a sudden up ahead I see an automobile with no lights and two kids pushing it on the highway. I started to go around them, but then I thought, "No, I'll pull in behind them because if I could have almost hit them, someone else not as alert might hit and kill them." So I pulled in behind the car ten or fifteen feet behind. Just as I stopped I looked in my rear view mirror and saw a car careening down on me. I began to pump my brake lights to let him know that I was stopped. He saw them too late and slid into me. The police took an hour or so investigating the accident. One of the young kids that was pushing this car was taking it sort of lightly so the patrolman turned to her, pointed his finger at her and said, "Young lady, if that man -(and he pointed at me)- if that man had not stopped and did what he did you might be dead now."
The following night about the same time I was going into town again to eat. I had not passed that place where the accident had occurred since it had happened. I was thinking about what had happened the night before and I was looking for the tire marks of the guy that slid into me. I saw the skid marks ahead of me and I said, "Well, my car was just ahead of those skid marks." All of a sudden there was a pedestrian walking on the side of the road. I was by him before I had time to even react and whip my wheel. I had been looking down at the road in front of me at the skid marks. Then I got to thinking, "Lord," I said, "Why-why would I have tried to save a life the night before, and then I could have killed somebody in exactly the same spot about the same time the following night?" I said, "I want to find out who that man is and why he was there." I had driven a couple of blocks so I turned around and I pulled on back, turned back around at Kelly's and shined my lights up ahead. As I turned straight going south I started looking for the man. He would have been south of that point, but no further than a half a block. There were no houses for a couple of blocks, but there was no man - no one. He didn't have time to be picked up by someone and he wasn't hitchhiking. He just vanished.
I was leaving my hotel room and thinking about God and life. I said, “God, show me what life is all about - let me know something, etc..”
As I got in my truck and turned the key, the radio announcer said, “This is your life station, WLIF.”
Listening to the radio one day, I was thinking about having been to the Top of the World at Disney World with my fiancé, who is now my wife. When the music stopped, the announcer said, "Disney World wants to send you to the Top of the World!"
After showing Joan how history, like every living thing is symmetrical if you turn the numbers backwards (like 1491 and 1941), she was very interested. “But”, I said, “people are not used to turning numbers backwards”.
That afternoon I went down to Scotty’s hardware store to buy a floor scrapper. As I walked up to the checkout counter, I noticed that I had the sticker on the handle containing the price upside down. I started to turn it around but the clerk stopped me and said “That’s OK, I’m used to reading numbers backwards”.
I wasn’t busy at work and I was talking with the Lord, talking to myself, and searching for answers. I was thinking of all the things that I had turned upside down or backwards. I said, "Lord, you communicate to me through things, and not backwards, but I'm always turning things upside down and backwards and it's confusing." I said, "You don't do things backwards while communicating to me. Lord, I'm going to reach over here and turn the radio on right now and just let you do the talking. I'll stop thinking, and I'll listen." I reached over and turned the radio on (the dial happened to be on WPIO, a local religious station) and the radio was playing a tape of music backwards. It was completely gibberish. That had never happened before.
At lunch while working, I was sitting in my truck listening to a preacher. I had spilled my coffee two or three times that day - a little here and a little there. Anyway, I then spilled a whole cup of coffee accidentally in my lap while this preacher is talking. At the same moment that I spilled it, the preacher said, "Sometimes in life, chaos spills all over us."
P.S. I made the notes for this book on tapes. When the typist was typing the above, as she came to the word "lap," she turned to me and said, "I don't know why, but I just typed "life" instead of "lap." I thought a moment and replied, "You might if you listen further."
One
day while eating lunch I was listening to the radio, (this was the same job
site where I spilled the coffee on me).
I was listening to a religious station and a preacher was raving,
"It is a sin to love two people and God dislikes someone that loves two
people or has two wives." He was
going on and on about it. At the moment
he was saying this, I was thinking of Solomon who had so many wives, Lamech with his two, Adah and Zellah (first and last) and of Abraham who had a wife and a
handmaiden, Jacob's two wives, the mothers of the twelve tribes of
Coming back form
an
When Joan awoke
after I returned, I said, “I just saw a couple from the ship talking to a woman
from
After we talked a few minutes, I realized that the young man who bummed a cigarette had tried to take Joan’s carry- on bag earlier.
I thought, “God, the human ear is truly a creation of the mind of God. Although it’s designed like a musical drum to interact with air. The man-made one makes sound, and yours receives sound, turning it into electrical impulses to the brain. The tool to receive and measure air pressure is nothing like the air it measures. It’s like man designing both a wrench and a bolt, neither is like the other, but both are perfect and serve one purpose. Similar to the other five senses, the ear of man is a miracle.”
Just then, the announcer on my truck radio asked: “Having trouble hearing? Get Miracle Ear.”
One morning I pulled out of the driveway and I was feeling very good. In a frivolous tone or attitude, I said, "Good morning God, I am going to sing to you." I started singing. I don't remember what the song was, but as I was singing, I turned onto the highway and pulled up behind another car. I looked at the license plate and it said, "HUM."
While driving in
I never said a word about it to my passenger. To him it would have made no sense and I didn’t want to try to explain it.
One
day on a job site in
My wife and I were enjoying Suzie Browings’ wedding reception until three young couples came in and innocently sat down at the table we briefly left, leaving our half filled glasses to return to. Joan was burning inside and wanted me to make a scene. I’m thinking, “God help me” as Joan goes off to the ladies room. Just then, the band started to play a country western song, “Pardon Me, But That’s My Chair.”
Every time my band plays that song at the lounge, I remember the wedding scene. Once when they started to play it, I glanced at the large TV across the room. A Crylon Paint commercial was being shown. The only thing displayed on the TV was a single chair.
As a laborer
turned to me after painting a building white in
Driving back
home to
Joan and I drove
to a club south of
Joan whispered to me as we sat across the room from the band stand, “Do you suppose he knows ‘Mary Ann’?” Frank then began to play the song ‘Mary Ann’.
Phil was
standing at the pool table looking at the musician about to start a song. The musician asked, “Whatcha
doin’ Phil?” I
butted in, “He’s just poolin’ around.” I meant the pun as a remark because he was
playing pool, but realized after I said it that his last name is ‘
Phil is also a musician and has played in our lounge. A few months later, we were sitting at the bar discussing the difficulties of making a living playing music when I glanced at the TV. A musician was sitting on a sidewalk playing his guitar with a tin cup in front of him.
I was with a group of friends in our home partying and telling jokes. I thought to myself, “ I want to compare Jose with hose B in some kind of a joke. How can I turn Jose into hose B?" At that moment "Jose Quervo, You are a Friend of Mine" commenced on the radio.
Last
month my wife and I were out driving and she wanted to stop at a motel to look
for Disney discount cards to give to someone who was visiting us. We pulled up to a motel at 528 & US 1 and
while she went inside, I was sitting out front in the truck. I looked straight in front of me and on a
column on the drive-thru, a rope was wrapped several times around a hook. I asked myself, "What in the world is that
rope doing wrapped around that hook?"
My wife comes back out of the motel, gets into the truck, and we back
out. More of the building comes into
view and I see that the rope is connected to a flagpole with an American flag
flying up above it, which I could not see before. At that moment, just as the flag came into
view, Lee Greenwood's song, "God Bless the
One Sunday afternoon, my wife and I took a leisurely ride. As I was driving along, I started humming a song. I thought, "What is the name of this song I'm humming?" I couldn't think of the words or title to the song. I then looked up at a big sign on the side of the road. It said Carousel Club. Suddenly I realized I had been humming the song "Carousel."
March
17, 1991 I was watching
I was sitting in the club discussing life and philosophy with Joanie. The subject came up about why life was interesting and unpredictable. I said, "You wouldn't want today to be just like yesterday. At that moment the juke box echoes, "Today, like yesterday."
One night I was sitting at the bar, thinking to myself. My philosophy is that God can be anyone. If God can do anything, God could be anyone. I thought of my former wife, and I said, "God, you could be Eunice (that was her name)." At that moment, a lady tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Would you dance with me?" We danced a song, and when we finished I asked her her name. She replied, "It's Eunice."
Which reminds me of a time I was on the dance floor with Joanie. Ronnie Coolie was playing the guitar, and I was quite tired from working that day. It crossed my mind that I was tired and I just wanted the song to end. At that moment, Ronnie stopped playing in the middle of the song and apologized for doing so; he wanted to re-tune his guitar.
Three years ago, I was in a bar and a song came on the jukebox or radio. I thought to myself, "It has been years since I heard that song." Immediately someone across the room said to some one else, "It's been years since I heard that song."
Once, in my den, I was singing "Georgia On My Mind," when a radio announcer finished a commercial and began to play "Georgia On My Mind."
In the Citrus Lounge one night Joan handed me some smoked mullet to eat. As I broke a piece to put in my mouth it crumbled apart and fell in my lap. I exclaimed, "This fish is falling to pieces." Just then a song started on the jukebox. Patsy Cline sang, "I FALL TO PIECES."
Two
years ago, I was driving to West Palm (down Interstate 95) to work. The radio was playing a country-western song
that mentioned Gatlinburg. I then thought about a Florida Lottery advertisement
where the woman said, "If I win the lottery, I want to go to
Gatlinburg." Just at that moment, I
noticed a sign on the side of Interstate 95 which said
When my deceased son was three or four
years old, he loved the song “Jingle Bells”, so I would sing it to him every
night as I put him to bed. As I was attending a musical concert in
Often while singing at the Citrus Lounge I would hold my nose to produce a nasal sound mimicking Willy Nelson. One night we had a new entertainer performing and during one song he had his wife come to the stage and hold her finger on his left nostril for the same reason. (He played the guitar as he sang so his hands were not free.) A minute or so after he finished, I glanced at the TV across the bar. A model in a commercial was holding her finger against her left nostril.
One morning as I was driving to work, I was singing. I started to sing a song that Willie Nelson does, and I was trying to imitate his voice with a nasal sound. As I was singing I got into so much nasal sound that I thought to myself, "I sound somewhat like Hank Snow" and started singing the song, "Movin' On" that Hank Snow did. I sang this several times and thought to myself, "This is so silly." I was really putting a lot of nasal into "Movin' On." Tiring of this, I thought, "I'll listen to the radio for a while," and I reached over and turned the radio on. Hank Snow was singing "Movin' On."
A few days later I was going to work again - a little further down the same road. The radio was on and I was listening to the music when suddenly I sneezed, I said, "Lord, don't have Hank Snow singing "Movin' On." Just then, a commercial ended and the announcer named a woman singer and said, "Here she is singing 'Movin' On'."
One day I was at the Ranch House Restaurant having coffee. As I was sitting there, doodling, I thought, "I'm going to think about the Bible. I'll think about the sevens in the Bible, . . . Oh yes,