Episode Transcript
Speaker A
00:00:01 - 00:10:27
It's all too often said that there are no miracles performed these days. Well, I'd like to challenge this idea with my story of a miraculous road direction event. Welcome to Miracles in the 21st Century. I'm Dr. John Ashton. Back in 1966, I bought a Packard motor car. It was a 1947 Packard Straight-8. And it was one of the first cars that I bought, and I became very interested in automotive engineering, particularly American cars. I later bought a 1949 Cadillac convertible, one of the 2 right-hand drive ones that came to Australia, and that car had been fitted with the world's first fully automatic gearbox, the original General Motors— Automatic transmission. 4-speed Hydra-Matic and also the first overhead valve V8 engine for General Motors, the 331 cubic inch Cadillac engine. And since that time, I'd had a number of other cars. But, you know, time moved on and I kept updating my cars. But in 2016, roughly 50 years after buying my first Packard, I became interested in taking up a new hobby. And I thought, why not join a classic car club? Because I enjoyed motoring in those cars. And I had many happy memories in the old Packard Straight-8. Matter of fact, I felt that it drove better than the Cadillac, even though the Cadillac was an automatic. I was very interested in the Packard Company, of course, because they were quite a famous engineering company. They built very expensive cars. They built the aircraft engines for the P-51 fighter planes in the Second World War. The Packard V-12 engines were used in the PT boats, including the one that President Kennedy had used. But I was particularly interested in the 1946-1947 style of car because that was the first American saloon car that was wider than it was high. And I thought it had particularly aesthetically attractive styling, body styling. So I contacted the Packard Owners Club in Australia and asked them if there were any members that had '46 or '47 Packards. And they gave me the names and contact details for half a dozen owners. And so I went through and contacted these people, and one owner who lived in Victoria agreed to sell me his car. He had a 1946 Packard straight-8 with the automatic electric overdrive, and it was a— had a very nice colour system. It had never actually been restored apart from The upholstery had been redone and it had been repainted, but it had just been well maintained. So I decided to buy this car, which meant then that I could join a classic car club and get to meet other people. And I had a couple of experiences associated with this. I remember getting off the plane in Melbourne, having flown down to Melbourne. And I was on the Skybus into the city to catch the train down to where the owner lived. And I was thinking, why am I doing this? I have a couple of really nice modern cars. Why am I going to an old car that has kingpins and that's 6-volt, not 12-volt? What's the point of this? When I received just out of the blue a text from my oldest daughter saying, hey, Dad, great to see you following your dreams. And a little while later, I got a text from my youngest daughter saying, hey, Dad, if you buy the car, fly Mum down and do a road trip. And so these really encouraged me. And I found out later the girls hadn't been talking to one another. They were just prompted to send that down. And that was really encouraging to me at the time. So I inspected the car, it appeared to be in good condition. I flew my wife down and I was loaned an eTag so I could use the expressways. And we set off from this location on Melbourne. And it was in the June long weekend of 2016. And we headed off. via a freeway into Melbourne because we were quite a bit south of Melbourne. And the idea was I need to get through Melbourne to then get onto the Hume Highway up to Sydney. And we didn't have a GPS, we didn't have a road map, so perhaps we hadn't really prepared ourselves for the travel. I was so excited about buying the car. But I remember we were travelling along the freeway, it was about 6 lanes, and so I'm thinking, here I am in this car that's nearly 70 years old. And what's going to break down? Is the water pump going to fail? Is the Welch plug going to blow? Is the generator going to seize? What's going to go wrong? And so rather than be doing the 110-kilometer speed limit, or I think it was 160, mile an hour, I'm sitting on 50 mile an hour, which is around 80 kilometres an hour, and in the very left lane in case something goes wrong. But then as we approached the outskirts of Melbourne, I saw way over on the far right-hand side of this multi-lane highway was the exit to go into the tunnel to take me under Melbourne and bypass all the Melbourne traffic and take me around to get onto the Hume. And I was now in the far left lane where I'm in a lane that now has to exit somewhere. And I had no idea where I was, no idea where I was. But I couldn't get across because it was holiday traffic. The traffic was just packed. So I exited. And as I drove down, there were 3 lanes exiting. I saw a taxi on the right-hand lane. And so I try— I was in the centre lane, so I tried to pull up next to him and get his attention by waving. And he was looking down doing something. Eventually he noticed me and put his window down. And I said, hi, how do I get onto the Kim Highway? And he said, oh, you should have turned off back there, mate. And I said, yeah, I realise that, but what do I do now? And he rattled off this list of directions. Well, Go down here, turn right into Victoria Parade and go on such and such and then such and such and then such and such and then you'll do this, that. And then the lights changed and he drove off. And I said to my wife, did he say turn right or left down here? You know, but I saw that most of the cars were turning right and that seemed to be the intuitive way to go in the right direction. So we turned that. And there I was confronted with this long 3 lanes of traffic. Row after row of traffic lights, we're just crawling along. I'm looking down at the fuel gauge and I'm thinking, wow, this is a, you know, big old straight-8 engine. How much fuel am I going to go through sitting here in traffic? How much, you know, I had filled up with fuel, but, you know, was it going to last? And I had no idea where to go. And I just prayed out loud, Lord, Please help us get out of here. And so we continued down for another 4 or 5 minutes or more, down slowly moving through sets of traffic lights. And then suddenly I noticed that I was about the 3rd car back, still in the middle lane. We were stopped at a set of traffic lights and there was a taxi in the right-hand lane about 3 cars ahead. And as we were sitting there waiting for the lights to change, The driver of the taxi jumped out, ran back, ran up to my car and handed me this piece of cardboard. And on this piece of cardboard were written the directions of how to get onto the Hume Highway. And I have kept this actual piece of cardboard as a memento of that actual answer to prayer. He wrote, right Victoria Parade, right Elizabeth, straight on Royal Parade, Become Sydney Road, right on Western Ring Road, exit on Hume Freeway. And so this piece of cardboard that he obviously tore off the back of some notepad that he had there, but he wrote that out and came back in the middle of that traffic. And we followed those directions exactly and got onto the Hume Highway where we could get home and have an event-free journey home. So I've always remembered that God is amazing. And although it was such a simple thing as I called out in desperation, God answered that way, that prayer, in my mind, in a very miraculous way by impressing that taxi driver to go out of his way and in the midst of traffic while stopping at the different traffic lights, write out the directions. possibly keeping an eye on my car coming behind him, and then when he had the opportunity, run back and give it to me. And I thank the Lord for that. And this encourages me that as Christians, we do serve a loving and wonderful God that has a wonderful future planned for us. May God bless you.
