DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACULES?

Early in the day on Christmas Eve 1988, I left Duncan, Oklahoma, in my Nissan truck, bound for Albuquerque, New Mexico, to see my mom. She and my dad had separated a few years before and, this being an even-numbered year, I was spending Christmas with her.

Between Tucumcari and Santa Rosa, the weather turned bad, and westbound I-40 was reduced to a pair of tracks in the mounting snow. I joined a bumper-to-bumper ribbon of cars which stretched to the horizon.

Afternoon was now evening and I still had far to go.

Topping a hill, I could see in the median far ahead a shadow which became a shape which eventually became a sedan buried up to its windshield in a snow bank. There were two people – one large woman and one small man – standing beside the car. The man was trying, pointlessly, to push the car loose.

I watched in disbelief as driver after driver passed the stranded travelers. As I got ever nearer and still nobody stopped to offer aid, it became evident it would be left to me.

It was a no-brainer. I pulled over and asked if I could help.

“Where are you headed?” I asked, hoping it was not in the other direction.

“Albuquerque,” answered the man, in a thick German accent.

“Great. Hop in.”

They placed their luggage in the bed and joined me in the cab of my little truck, which now seemed even littler with the little man and his not-so-little female companion joining me.

The man (if he ever told me his name, I’ve long-since forgotten it) told me there was no need to take them “all de vay” to Albuquerque. As far as the next town would do, he said. So he could call a wrecker.

I was not optimistic.

In Santa Rosa, we learned no wreckers were available. In Clines Corners, they told us – after a small amount of you-poor-bastards-are-so-screwed snickering – that they might be able to get to us by midday the next day. Christmas Day.

As the hours passed, I became concerned that the conditions were going to worsen from inconvenient to impassible. And I still had to navigate the always-tricky Tijeras Canyon Pass through the Sandia Mountains on the east side of Albuquerque. It was now almost dark.

It took more than an hour to cover the 20 miles to Moriarty, the last “legitimate” town before the final 40-mile push into Albuquerque. It was during this leg that my passengers “opened up” to me. Actually, only the man spoke. His companion – whom I eventually just had to assume was his wife – was happy to remain mute, only breaking her silence with the occasional outburst/announcement that I was a “Klistmas miracule.”

The man told me how he had struggled as an immigrant during the Great Depression.

“I hopped trains like a hobo, because I was poor.”

Times were hard.

“I stole food, because I was hungry.”

Times were very hard.

“But I never killed a man!”

Times were now officially worrisome. Without being obvious, I took my first close look at the man sitting 0.5 inches away from me. He seemed harmless enough, but the desire to finally act upon a 50-year-old urge to murder could certainly make up for any size or age disadvantage, so I decided to ratchet up my defenses. He may have had a decades-old thirst for blood, but I had a Sony Walkman in my coat pocket and I wasn’t afraid to use it.

We crawled into Moriarty well after dark. We stopped at the only open business on this particular, snowy, Christmas Eve – a motel with a comforting, spend-the-holidays-with-us name like “The Bed Bug Inn” or “Hourly Rates.” The clerk told us that the town’s wrecker was parked at such-and-such address in town. This seemed perfectly normal to me, under the circumstances.

Somehow, we found such-and-such address, but there was no wrecker parked there and nobody answered the door. Secretly, terribly, I hoped the residents were all in the wrecker – children and visiting family, too – and stuck in a snowbank somewhere.

We drove back to the Interstate, where we made the acquaintance of a Sheriff’s deputy whose cruiser was blocking the onramp to the highway and my only escape route from Moriarty.

I knew it before he said it.

“Interstate’s closed, folks.

The once-inconceivable notion that I would ever spend a Christmas in Moriarty, New Mexico, was close to becoming a reality – via police fiat – that I would spend this Christmas in Moriarty. And I’m sure the people who live there are fine and decent Americans, but I don’t think even the residents of Moriarty want to spend Christmas there.

“You’ll have to stay here. The roads are too icy. The interstate is closed.”

“Not to me it isn’t.” I said.

With that completely gangster exit line, I swerved around the cruiser and headed for the onramp, my concentration divided between the icy roads ahead of me and the question of whether Christmas in jail in Moriarty was better or worse than Christmas anywhere else in Moriarty.

Ironically, the last leg of the trip was the least eventful. The roads were surprisingly clear and we covered the 40 miles in less than an hour. I took them to their hotel, where we exchanged handshakes and hugs and one last flurry of “Klistmas miracules.” Ten minutes later, I was at my mom’s house, where she was wondering where the heck I’d been.

I said, “Well it’s been a heckuva day. But I’m happy to say I was neither murdered nor arrested. Which is pretty much a Klistmas miracule.”

© 2014 Lee B. Weaver