An Alligator Crossing the Nanafalia Bridge

I was visiting one of the churches I served when director of missions in Bethel down at Hoboken Baptist Church and saw a small dog that did not have a back leg.  That’s something that you don’t see everyday.  I told some small boys watching the dog that the church ran out of chicken legs for Sunday Dinner and they borrowed one from the dog.

My brother-in-law had some cousins that had a small dog that lost both back legs.  Feeling sorry for him, his uncle made the dog an apparatus with roller skate wheels attached to the puppy’s body where his legs would be.  I often wondered what he did around fire hydrants, car tires, and trees.  That’s something you don’t see everyday, a dog roller skate backside.

Back around 1972, the Goodyear Blimp was making a trip from Florida to the Iron Bowl in Birmingham.  The blimp was following Interstate 65.  I was a die setter for Keystone Metal Moulding in Clanton and I was helping a couple of co-die setters stack dies behind the building.  We spotted the blimp meandering above I-65.

Now, there were men and women working at Keystone that were very common country folk.  I could tell they had never been very far from home and lived sheltered lives.  Several ladies came running outside and were in a panic because they were seeing a UFO.  They were screaming and some were wringing their hands.  A cigar shaped silver object slowly rocking in the Eastern sky.  They thought the Lord was coming.  In a blimp. Really?

I stood there amazed at the people.  I said, “Hey y’all it’s the Goodyear Blimp headed to the game at Legion field Saturday.”  Some asked how did know it’s not a spaceship.  I said it has Goodyear written on the side.  It was something you don’t see everyday.

I was headed to the office when I noticed that the pickup in front of me had a mattress and box springs on the trailer it was pulling.  I observed that the mattress had become untied.  Suddenly, the wind picked the mattress up, up, up and away.  In the words of the crows in the Disney movie Dumbo, “Well, I have seen a horsefly, and I seen a dragonfly, yeah, I seen a housefly,” but I ain’t never seen a mattress fly until that moment.  The mattress looked like a large blue and white albatross slowly flying to the roadside.  That’s something your don’t see everyday, a mattress fly.

Speaking of seeing things on the roadside, on our way back from Texas I saw a stretch limo broke down on the side of the road.  It had a couple of doors open and the hood up.  I traveled for years and I think that was a first.  Limos with open doors and hood up are not something you see everyday.

One day traveling on the Interstate I saw port-a-let tied on the back and in the trunk of a car.  I know there are motor homes and travel trailers with built in toilets, but that was the first car I saw with one.  That’s something you do not see everyday.  The poor soul must have had Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

I was told by a truck driver that he saw a large alligator crossing the Nanafalia Bridge between Marengo and Choctaw counties.  Someone in a log truck tried to run over its tail, but most people dodged it.  When someone asked me reckon what the alligator was doing on the bridge.  I said, “Undoubtedly, he did not want to swim from Choctaw County to Marengo County, so took the bridge thinking it safer than being hit by a barge.  An alligator crossing the Nanafalia Bridge is something you don’t see every day.

Headed back home from Central State Bank in Calera when I worked at the cement plant, I saw a group of motorcycles.  The bikers and their women were a motley crew.  Long hair, beards, tattoos, and sporting sleeveless shirts and jackets they rumbled down Main Street on US Highway 31.  I noticed one of the blondes in a black leather jacket on the back of a Harley Hog was a neighbor.  What caught my eye was one of the Harleys pulled a small trailer.  A trailer behind a bike is not unusual. But, the casket on the trailer is something you don’t see every day.  I asked Shelia, my neighbor, about the casket.  She said it was a biker brother that wanted to be carried to graveyard on his bike.  Now that is something you don’t see every day. 

When is the last time you saw something that you don’t see everyday?  I think God gives us these moments where we can stop for a jiffy and ponder life.  Some things we see or hear about can be life changing like the corona virus we are experiencing this Spring of 2020. 

When Jesus walked on earth, there were plenty of things not seen every day.  The blind saw, the deaf heard, and the lame walked.  Lazarus rose from the dead, Peter walked on the water, and a small boy gave his lunch and Jesus fed five thousand.  People did not see those things every day.

I thought about Moses’ call as I pondered on these things.  He saw something that you do not see every day.  He saw a burning bush that did not burn.



And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him (Moses) in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed (Exodus 3:2 KJV).



As you venture down life’s highway, meditate on the things that you do not see everyday and ask this question.  God, what are you trying to teach me?