Three hundred miles of the trip is on freeway, though route 10 east through Southern Arizona and New Mexico is a remote freeway at best. The rest of the trip is into Mexico is on oiled roads and some dirt roads leading to the farm house. The first trip to Mexico went great and I took molds of the missing teeth so that I could return and have them replaced with dentures. Last Wednesday we took off in the middle of the night about one in the morning headed for Mexico a second time. We arrived in Mexico at the farm about seven in the morning and I went to bed immediately having driven most of the way.

When I woke up around one in the afternoon the house was humming with people. That didn't seem odd to me because Rosa's Mexican family is very close and they love to sit around and gab. It is like watching love in action. However, something strange was going on. They were talking about a car accident. For a while I thought that someone in the neighborhood had experienced some unfortunate event. I finally asked them through sleepy eyes who was it that had an accident. They all turned to me and said, "You did". I couldn't believe my ears. I didn't remember having a car accident. But the family gathered around me and took me outside where my car had been parked. I looked on the dirt driveway and there was a pool of oil from the crankcase in my car. Rosa told me to follow her and I saw a trail of oil leading out through the gate into the road. We followed the trail of oil for a couple of blocks until it stopped suddenly in another pool in the dirt street. Rosa told me that the oil plug from the crank case had worked itself loose and had fallen off and the oil had rushed out of the car. In a flash I understood that the guy who had replaced the oil in my car had only finger-tightened the plug and it had worked itself loose two blocks from the house. The whole family was following us. They said that they had found the plug lying in the road. I was shocked. I had visions of the plug falling off on the freeway somewhere in the three trips back and forth to Mexico and my engine freezing solid. What was worse is that the engine could have frozen up in Mexico where there are not metric stores. If you don't have a Ford you can't fix your car because there are no part stores.

When we got back to the house I could hear the family mumbling the word "miracle". This was truly a miracle. I told her mother that we had prayed to God to keep us safe on the journey. They were quick to understand and believe. They are that kind of family. It was obvious to me that God had kept the plug from falling off until we were so close to the house that we could get help. It should have fallen off somewhere on the freeway when the oil was hot or on the bumpy roads of Mexico where it would have been jostled loose. However, it didn't. It was but one of the hundreds of times the Lord had saved me from a disaster. My nephews had fixed the car and put oil back in the crank case. Amazingly I had my guitar in my car. I knew these kids were musical and didn.t have instruments. It was an easy decision to go to my car and get my guitar and hand it to them as a gift for their kindness. It wasn.t the first time I had given my guitar to someone special. I could write a book about guitar stories. Guitars are like family. You learn to love them. Sometimes you love them enough to give them to someone who would love them more.