My husband, Michael, and I recently revisited the historic Ohio State Reformatory, renowned for being haunted. We intended to photograph everything unearthly within the prison’s creepy, ghoulish halls. Because we’re free-spirited flower children from the last century, we didn’t schedule a tour in advance.
As it turned out, it didn’t matter what we had our hippie hearts set on. Proverbs 19:21 tell us regardless of what we plan, it’s the Lord’s decision that endures.
When we arrived, Michael asked about the tour schedule. The wait would be two hours. Meanwhile, we’d tramp around the reformatory grounds and snap pictures. Unfortunately, a carnival of food vendors cluttered the front of the prison. We searched for an unobstructed angle with the enthusiasm of a couple of bricks.
I climbed an incline to capture a clear image of the side of the reformatory. Michael called out, “Come down! You’re taking pictures too close to the correctional facility behind the reformatory. They’ll confiscate your camera!” We were warned about this on a previous tour.
Then he whisper-yelled in a voice that echoed three times around the reformatory. “Video cameras are recording you!”
Too late.
I tucked my bulky Nikon camera-with a zoom lens the length of a humongous bratwurst-inside my jacket. Did they have an enforcer-a gulag guy? They must! Flushed with fear, I looked like a glowing granny with a bun in the oven. Even worse, Michael’s eyeballs began to pop out from the thought of a two-hour wait.
We had to escape!
We jumped back into our car and headed home, almost a two-hour drive. After being on the lam for an hour, the congested four-lane highway curved around road construction. Our getaway vehicle hit truck debris and pinged.
“Did you hear that?” Michael asked. I had, but the car still propelled forward so we continued on in the center of swarming ant-like traffic.
Then another ping. The oil light flickered on and off. Then PING, PING, PING!
During stressful times, memories are foggy, but our conversation went something like this:
I suggested, “Let’s pull onto the berm so other drivers have a shot at running us over.”
So Michael navigated to the right lane just as an exit appeared.
“Battling traffic is lots of fun,” he commented, “but should I get off here before the car explodes?”
“Yes!” I said. “We don’t want other drivers toasting marshmallows in our trail of flames.” Or the gulag guy overtaking us to make sure my camera is toast!
We managed to make it to a gas station with a convenience store. We parked and looked over our 2010 Lexus. Its underbelly glistened with oil-black gold, Texas tea (Beverly Hillbillies). Michael called a roadside service. The wait for a tow truck would be an hour and a half.
We have a fun goal of finding a dollar in change every month, so I began searching for lost coins. I picked up two pennies before wandering into the store to check out the fake food. The air tasted like Doritos. Looking past the nachos, pork rinds, and donut holes, I grabbed Michael a pack of peanuts. I wanted him to stay alive.
After delivering his snack, I strolled over to the back corner of the parking lot. My jaw dropped. A scattering of change was lit up by the sun. Like a squirrel gone psycho, I zigzagged herky jerky grabbing coins that seemed to sprout out of the asphalt. I discovered a dime and 28 pennies and reported the find to Michael.
Instead of doing cartwheels, he phoned the call center again. The truck would be delayed another hour. Curiously calm, Michael stood by the car eating peanuts and staring at the road. He blinked rapidly to keep his eyeballs in place. If he spotted the gulag guy while watching for the truck, this twitching man of steel would protect me.
I went back into the store. The cashier, talking in Hindi to someone on his phone, paused and asked, “Do you still wait for duh druck?”
“Yeah, the tow truck is delayed for another hour,” I told him. “Can you please direct me to the bathroom?”
“It iz in duh back,” he pointed. “Duh lighting iz a problem.” He continued his phone conversation in Hindi.
There was definitely a lighting problem. There was no light. I locked the door and a faint glow seeped through the bottom crack. I fumbled around for the toilet. But in a gas station, it could be a bucket or a toilet-sink combo. Hopefully, I found it.
Now, smelling like rotisserie wieners and exhaust fumes, I continued looking for coins everywhere but in the dumpster. I didn’t want Michael to pretend he didn’t know me. Nevertheless, foraging like a goat has its perks. I found 30 cents more.
I followed the advice in Romans 12:12 to “Rejoice in hope, endure in affliction, persevere in prayer.” And after two hours and 45 minutes, a tow truck arrived.
The driver cranked up our car onto the flatbed, looked underneath it, and marveled at the oil blowout across the undercarriage. Then he invited us to hitch a ride home in the cab of the truck. He didn’t know we were fleeing from a gulag guy.
On the way home, the friendly driver told us about a trailer home he’d purchased for his family of five. “I paid $6,000 dollars for it and fixed it up. We were so glad to get out of the house we were renting. It was $1,400 a month!”
“Our trailer is perfect!” he chirped. “It has two bedrooms-one for our three girls and one for my wife and me.” He took a few swigs of his energy drink. “They even let me park my truck in front of the trailer park. We just love it!”
He had me sold on trailers. I was ready to go out and buy one from the scrapyard.
Then Michael and the driver got into an exciting conversation about the Vikings. No, not the Minnesota Football team-the seafaring warriors from a thousand years ago. They bantered back and forth about the savages who painted themselves with their victims’ blood and ate raw meat.
I pictured parasitic worms squirming around in their ancient messed up guts.
Surprisingly, after arriving home, I still wanted to eat. I reheated leftover sauerkraut and sausage, took two bites, then spit out the second bite. It crunched like eggshells. The next bite crackled. I gulped hoping nothing too gruesome had crawled down my throat.
Ravenous, I took another bite. The same thing-crunch, crunch, crunch. Finally, I found what felt like a rat’s tooth. Between my fingers, a shard of glass glistened. The gulag guy didn’t get me, but my sauerkraut did.
We’d planned to photograph weird things at the reformatory, but my fears spawned the gulag guy. Did he exist? I envisioned an enforcer snatching my camera-so he became as real to me as the prison ghosts.
When we didn’t wait for the tour and left, it paved the way for a fun day at the gas-mart. That’s not all. Our car didn’t become a barbecue grill, an awesome tow truck driver rescued us, and I ate someone’s good China and didn’t die. Does it get much better than that? Yes, I still have my camera!
Psalm 118:24 says: “This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice in it and be glad.” And I am!
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Thank you again, Rose. It’s so kind of you to promote the crazy, wacky gulag guy. 🙂
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November Highlight of the Month – Congrats! ~ Rosie
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You’re awesome, Rosie. Thanks! 🙂
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