It's difficult for any of us to last 65 years in this world without having at least a few inexplicable events that leave us wondering what the heck we just experienced.
I'm thinking about the prominent Fayetteville family on a road trip who happened across an overgrown, one-pump, one-man gas station at night just as they ran out of gas while traveling a 12-mile-long shortcut in middle-of-nowhere Oklahoma. Yet try as they might in subsequent journeys along that same shortcut, they could never find any sign of the station again. That dusty little country road is now listed as a rail line on maps.
Then there was the mother of four who put her children in the car then went back inside for something she'd forgotten. Heading back to the car she said a strange scene suddenly opened before her "like a drive-in movie screen" to show a bad accident happening at an intersection.
Several minutes later she eased to a stoplight and recognized it as being that very intersection. "Maybe it was a precognition," she said. "I don't know. I just know I took extra time and watched carefully as I drove through."
I've seldom shared my most profound mystery in 68 years. After all, if I can't explain it, how can I possibly expect anyone else to understand?
It was a summer's day in the Phoenix area and I'd just completed an interview with a husband and wife in a northwest suburb. At that time, in 1988, I had turned 42 and was heading our four-person investigative team at the Arizona Republic.
On this typical blazingly hot Arizona afternoon, I was headed back to the paper to input those notes in the computer. I also was thanking God for air conditioning.
Rather than endure the hectic freeway traffic back into downtown, I decided to take an unfamiliar exit well north.
My plan was to find a wider residential street connecting to a familiar major avenue that would lead directly to the office.
After traveling several blocks past houses on either side, I noticed drifting smoke ahead at an intersection. It was on a typical residential street, nothing out of the ordinary, except I remember seeing water shimmering across the pavement and the cross street intersected at a slight angle.
Drawing closer, I saw a burned-out shell of a car and wondered what could possibly have happened in such a tranquil setting. Driving on slowly past the car, I looked to see the person in the driver's seat charred black, with his head flung back and mouth agape. It was a terrible sight, one I've yet to erase from my mind.
There could have been another in similar condition on the passenger's side and still others in the back seat. I got only a glimpse, which was enough to know something awful had occurred. Yet oddly, I didn't recall seeing emergency vehicles or people around, although there might have been. You'd think I'd have remembered that for sure. That part of the experience remains strangely unclear, as does the reason I wouldn't have stopped.
Anyone would have thought a fatal car fire in a neighborhood would have drawn plenty of gawkers and others who'd been summoned to help.
Driving on, I finally did weave around and locate the street back downtown. At the office I called the fire department to ask what had happened in the northwest quadrant of Phoenix. They insisted they'd had no calls or notifications of any fires, especially a fatal car fire.
"Come on fellas, saaaaay wha' now?"
I certainly had not a single doubt about the horrible scene I'd witnessed not 40 minutes earlier. Still don't.
Then I called police and got the same response. "Nope, we've gotten no calls of any problems this afternoon in that area," the dispatcher said.
I asked both agencies to call me back if they did get calls. No calls came.
Before driving to the paper the next morning, I arose determined to retrace my steps from the previous afternoon. Surely I could locate that street again and perhaps speak to some residents who could help explain what I'd witnessed. But despite more than an hour of methodically criss-crossing those streets, I couldn't rediscover that intersection.
So I'm the first to admit the events of those moments all those years ago have haunted me for decades now. Just who and what did I see and why?
Last year I was still bothered enough to visit a hypnotherapist in hopes she might help restore memories and finer details of my profound mystery. But I guess I'm just not susceptible enough to go under the spell long enough to retrieve anything but my basic memory.
As I said up top, I believe many of us have such inexplicable events over our lifetime.
To me these occurrences are first cousins to the so-called GodNods that connect with our consciousness in mysterious ways through what appear to be coincidences, yet I'm convinced are anything but.
------------v------------
Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mikemasterson10@hotmail.com.
Editorial on 10/04/2015