One hot summer day, circa 1929 or 1930, after an ice delivery at our house, my younger brother and I followed the ice man to his truck and begged for a piece of ice to suck on. Having successfully negotiated the plea, we went in the house with our piece of ice. We were in the kitchen with our mother when my brother hollered and she turned around and looked at me. I had crumpled to the floor, and my face was turning blue. I had accidently swallowed the piece of ice, which was way too big to go down.
As previously mentioned, my family were Pentecostal Christians, and very strong believers in Divine healing, miracles, and the power of the Holy Spirit. There was no time to call a rescue squad, there was no 911, the nearest police station was about five miles away, the nearest hospital between two and three miles away. My father had the car at work, and the same was true of most of the other homes in the area, and by the time she got me across the street I'd be dead, so mother cupped her hand under my chin, and in a very loud voice, commanded the ice to come out of me in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. The ice instantly came out in her hand, in three pieces! There is no one alive to substantiate the story, but I remember it very well, and mother told it repeatedly until the day she died in 1992.
At the peak of the Depression, in 1937, I was selling papers to finance school supplies and clothes. I sold the Los Angeles Herald on weekdays, and on Saturdays the Sunday editions of the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Examiner. My corner where I sold papers and loudly hollered headlines or Extra, was the Southwest Corner of Madison and Colorado Blvd. about 80% of my customers were regulars, and some would stop across the street. I would scamper across the street to deliver their paper for an extra nickel. I was doing rather well, and able to help out with the home economy.
Madison and Colorado Blvd. was a four-way Signal, and one afternoon, a car on the Northwest corner (across very busy Colorado Blvd., the Pasadena New Year's Day rose parade route) honked for my attention, requiring a paper. The Signal was green, so I grabbed a paper and stepped off the curb. Suddenly, Someone or some thing grabbed my shirt at the back of the neck and lifted me back on the sidewalk, and at that instant an East bound City Bus went through an early signal and had it not been for the quick acting individual, I would have been squashed like a pancake. A little shaken, I turned around to see and thank whoever pulled me to safety. THERE WAS NO ONE WITHIN ONE HUNDRED OR MORE FEET. The doorway to the nearest store, a men's haberdashery, was about 25 feet away, and no one was near it. Looking for that person cost me the sale of a paper and a tip, but I'm satisfied that the Angel God has never allowed me to see, was there, and did what God sent him for; to guard and protect my life.
I never saw that bus until its tires passed over the spot where I had been standing. I'd love to have seen the driver's face when he saw the paper boy jump backward from the gutter back up onto the curb while looking the other way, an impossible maneuver.
F.W.(Lucky)Hope
Hope Testimonies
Hope 1 Beginning in Liberia
Hope 2 Healing
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