Pulled Pork Sandwich and a Sweet Potato

We met shortly after I adopted my sweet little chihuahua, Ty as we were walking at the Lake Trail in Belleview, where I live. Bob lived in the neighborhood and also had a chihuahua, an adorable little girl named Lilly. Since chihuahuas usually love to meet other chihuahuas, it was inevitable we would meet.

Bob was a very easygoing, friendly gent and it was easy to strike up a comfortable conversation while our dogs were playing. Because Ty and I tended to walk roughly the same time every night, which was also roughly the same time Bob and Lilly walked, we eventually ended up walking together. Those walks evolved into a warm friendship between Bob and me, as well as with Shayna, his daughter who lived with him. We eventually met all of Bob’s neighbors who walked their dogs and it wasn’t long before we were exchanging phone numbers and planning our evening walks together. It didn’t matter that I actually did not live in the neighborhood myself; I had to drive five minutes or so to get to the trail to walk, but I considered their neighborhood my neighborhood too.

We had all been friends for about eight years when things began to change in our circle of friends. One of the ladies in our group, Geri, started limiting her walks to early mornings because of her work schedule. Her daughter had gotten in a terrible accident and was out of commission for many months and when she did walk, was limited to shorter distances. The couple who started walking with us, Don and Janice, didn’t walk as much as they had in previous years as Don’s knees were starting to bother him. That left Bob and I to walk for about a year. Bob was slowing down noticeably, and his walks were getting shorter and shorter. He was pushing 73 years at that time, and his knees were bothering him, as well as his back, both injuries from his tours in Vietnam. One evening in late August, he revealed to me that he had been falling down a lot. Because of that and the fact that he was getting more and more unsteady on his feet, I got into the habit of watching him cross the small two-lane street to get to his house from the trail after our walks.

Gradually, our walking pace became slower and Bob started to use a walking cane. Eventually, he could only walk a very short distance. His health had begun to be problematic for him, as it does for all of us with the passage of time. He complained of being too forgetful, his knees started hurting even more, and his back, which he said gave him problems anyway, began to hurt excruciatingly bad. In addition to these things, he was having other problems he didn’t talk too much about; problems with his prostate.

Finally, one afternoon during our short walk, he disclosed to me that he had been to the doctor, who expressed concern about his having an enlarged prostate. He wanted to run a battery of tests to see if he had cancer or not. Normally, prostate problems are not too much cause for concern, unless they are cancerous and have spread to other organs. With the back pain Bob was having the doctor revealed that he was uneasy, wondering if his problems might be due to that. He asked me to not tell anyone else until he found out all of the test results for certain. I agreed. He revealed to me his secret fears about the prospect of cancer that had metastasized and he made it known that if it turned out to be the case, he would not have chemotherapy or radiation treatments. One of his neighbors had chemotherapy and radiation treatments for aggressive lung cancer that had spread and Bob and I both had seen the battle she had fought over the year or two that she had been dealing with it. He always said “If it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go. I will embrace the time I have left and get the most out of life I can get.”

During these talks, Bob would cheerfully remind me that he had guardian angels watching out for him (and me) and that no matter what happened, he would be at peace with the outcome.

In the months after this initial conversation, Bob found that he did have prostate cancer, but they did not know the stage yet or the extent it might have spread to other organs. He had a myriad of doctor’s appointments to keep, most of them in the Villages. Being a very concentrated metropolis rivaling Orlando, the Villages has a high concentration of traffic on any given day of the year but is especially thick during the fall and winter months as the vacationers Floridians have dubbed “Snow Birds” flock to the Sunshine State. It was during one of these appointments on a warm fall day in 2021 that something odd happened.

Bob had just finished with a doctor’s appointment where he had undergone several tests to find out the extent the cancer might have spread in his body. Afterward, he was homebound when his truck suddenly lost power. He coasted as far as he could and managed to pull part way into a parking lot where there was a gas station and a BBQ restaurant. He got out of his truck and popped the hood to see what the problem was. He discovered the timing belt had snapped and then had the realization that he was stranded and not even completely out of the way of traffic. He was pondering his dilemma when he turned to see one of the largest men he had ever seen in his life striding towards him. After a cheerful greeting, the man offered to push the truck out of the driveway and into a better parking spot. Bob was prepared to help push because it was a heavy truck and he figured even a man that size was going to need some help, but the man directed Bob to sit in the truck and steer. Skeptically, Bob obliged. When the truck began to move, he stole a glance in the rearview mirror to see the stranger pushing the truck with one hand! He was shocked at the sight of this man effortlessly pushing his heavy truck one handed. They reached an out-of-the-way parking spot and when Bob got out to thank the man for his help, he noticed the man wasn’t even breathing heavily nor had he broken a sweat, in spite of the workout in the Florida autumn heat. Bob turned to reach for his wallet in the glove box of the truck to give the man some money, and when he emerged, the man was gone! He couldn’t have made it to the entrance of the gas station or the restaurant in that amount of time. It was as though he had vanished in thin air, but then, he had appeared that quickly too. Dumbfounded, Bob decided he was going to look for the man in the gas station, and then the restaurant, but as he was locking the doors on his truck, a huge diesel truck pulling a 30ft camper pulled up.

“Hey Partner, looks like you could use a hand. What can I do to help you?” the man in the driver’s seat of the diesel truck asked.

Bob quickly relayed that the timing belt on his truck had snapped and that he was going to have to call a tow truck after he finds the man who helped him push his truck. After the man in the diesel asks what the man looked like, and Bob gives a description of the big man, the diesel driver tells Bob he had just finished eating at the restaurant and he had gone in the gas station to buy fuel and there was no one in either place with the description Bob gave him, but there was a tow truck driver finishing his lunch in the restaurant who could give him a tow anywhere he needed. The diesel driver then holds out a rolled wad of money to Bob, who tries to refuse it, but the diesel driver insists and Bob gratefully accepts the money gift. Bob had a mind to get the man’s number so he could arrange to pay him back, but the driver waves him away and insists there was no need for repayment. He smiles and pulls away, leaving Bob to discover that the roll of cash was in the amount of $200. More than enough to pay the tow truck driver for towing his car back to Belleview.

Flabbergasted, Bob makes his way into the restaurant to find the tow truck driver. When he does, the driver lets him know he is free to tow his truck home after he finishes lunch, which should not be long.

The hostess asks Bob if he’d like to wait for the driver at a table up front, and if he’d like anything while he waits. Bob gladly accepts a seat and a glass of water but declines any food. As the tow truck driver was paying his bill, a waitress hands Bob a brown paper sack. He tries to tell her it was a mistake and that he didn’t order any food, but the waitress insists that the sack had his lunch in it. He doesn’t want to appear ungrateful, but he also doesn’t want anyone else to be out of a lunch if it was a mistake. He asks other guests who approach the front but no one claims the food to go. The tow truck driver tells Bob he’s ready, and so Bob takes his brown sack and leaves.

Back at his house, after the truck is towed and the driver is paid, Bob goes in to rest. He spots the brown sack on the table where he left it, and decides to peek inside to see what the kindhearted restaurant crew packed for his lunch. He opens the sack and what he pulls out astonishes him.

In the sack is a pulled pork BBQ sandwich and a baked sweet potato! He calls for his daughter Shayna to come see what happened, and after he tells Shayna about the day and shows her the sandwich and sweet potato. Shayna is just as amazed as Bob is because, the week prior to this event, Bob had mentioned to Shayna that he had been craving a pulled pork sandwich and a sweet potato and wanted to return to Sonny’s BBQ for them, but they never got a chance to go.

As Bob was relating this story to me, I got goosebumps on my arms. The man who helped him push his truck and disappears, the diesel driver who shows up and gives him $200 to tow his truck home, and the fact there just so happened to be a tow truck driver eating lunch at the restaurant where he breaks down. Then, the restaurant employees giving him, of all things, a pulled pork sandwich and a sweet potato. Of all the odd things to give someone whom you feel might need a lunch.

Some people would consider all of the unusual things that happened to Bob that day to be ‘Godwinks’, defined as personal events that are deemed as coincidence, but are so unusual or timely they could only come from a higher power; divine intervention, usually as an answer to a prayer. I expressed my opinion as such, and both Bob and Shayna agreed with me.

A week following the events of the ‘Godwink Day’ as it had become known as, Bob, my brother Philip and myself were having breakfast at our local breakfast haunt, and Bob was recounting the events of the ‘Godwink Day’ for my brother. Even he agreed that the events that happened in the manner they happened were outside the norm and definitely could be described as a Godwink.

Two weeks after the Godwink Day, my brother was at work. He is a security guard and works a graveyard shift at a club. He had been having a bad day prior to going to work that evening and somehow forgot his lunch on his kitchen counter. He had said a little prayer after arriving to work because he felt that his work day had not started off very well, and, he had no lunch and no way to leave to get any. A few hours after his shift started, his supervisor showed up unexpectedly and bearing gifts. He handed my brother a brown sack and told him he had taken the liberty of bringing him some lunch, and that he couldn’t say why he felt compelled to do so. My brother was touched, and grateful to say the least. But it was when he opened the sack to reveal a pulled pork sandwich and a sweet potato that he fell backward and almost lost his footing. He called me immediately and told me what happened. I then called Bob and relayed my brother’s experience. We all agreed. It was proof of divine intervention.

Two weeks after my brother had his Godwink pulled pork sandwich and sweet potato lunch, and three full weeks following Bob’s Godwink Day, Bob found out the prostate cancer was stage four and they thought it might have spread to his kidneys, but they were going to do some more tests to be sure.

A few days later, Bob called me again, this time with another odd story. His other neighbor who had just passed away had a friend who had come to check on him for a few years prior to his passing. One afternoon following this neighbor’s passing, this gentleman came and knocked on Bob’s door. When Bob opened the door, they exchanged greetings and the gentleman told Bob that since he used to come check on his neighbor and now his neighbor has passed, he would like to come check on him. He handed Bob a brown sack and told him, “I brought you some lunch.” Bob was confused but thanked the man, who promptly took his leave. When Bob went back into the house and opened the sack, you could imagine his surprise when he discovered yet another pulled pork sandwich and a sweet potato. Bob was completely beside himself.

Bob received the news the following week. His stage four cancer had miraculously not spread to any other area of his body, which the doctors proclaimed was almost a miracle in itself. He took the liquid radiation seed treatments like a champ, and with no negative side effects, save for being tired, and he lived for a few more years with no sign of prostate cancer.

What were all of the incidents with the pulled pork sandwiches and the sweet potatoes? Do you think there was a divine message there that said “I am with you, I hear you and am taking care of your needs.”? Or do you think they were just coincidences?

You decide.