I had chosen to attend a private religious college in South Carolina. Because of cost and distance, Christmas was the only time many BJU students could get home during the school year. Naturally, we were very excited and eager to get home when the day of departure finally arrived.

But I usually traveled the cheap way - by car. It was a twelve hour drive to Indiana, unless you were a senior named Sonny majoring in theology, and you drove a car full of us eighty miles an hour through the mountains of Tennessee. Then it was only a nine hour trip!

So much for my freshman year.

My sophomore year, I had a room mate who was a talented hairdresser. The night before Christmas break, I had her do my hair in this relentless, elegant, guaranteed-to-last-a-week, bouffant hair-do. I barely slept a wink that night. That year five of us girls from Indiana rode with my Spanish professor Mary Jane Hayes, who was from Indianapolis.

Just two hours out of Greenville, the car engine died, leaving six young women stranded on a lonely two-lane highway, close to the top of a wooded hill in North Carolina. While we sat there helplessly, a tractor trailer rig pulled up behind us. A gruff-looking, bearded guy emerged from the cab and briefly surveyed our situation.

Getting back into his rig, he pushed us to the top of the hill, and then followed us while we coasted all the way down the other side. He waved good-bye as we pulled in to a gas station that happened to be located at the bottom.

"Maybe he's really an angel sent to help us," Mary Jane reflected.

A shiver suddenly ran down my spine. Funny, I had never pictured one wearing a flannel shirt, smoking a cigarette, and driving a Mack truck!

Three hours later, our vehicle repaired, our spirits high, we were back on the road. We were barely into Tennessee when the car broke down again.

"We can still make it tonight," Mary Jane said confidently, as the six of us sat in the gas station.

Two hours later, the trip continued, this time without further interruption. Until 9:00 o'clock that night when we woke up to find ourselves in Columbus, Ohio instead of Indianapolis, Indiana. Our driver had taken a wrong turn in Cincinnati and had been driving east for two hours, but no one was awake to notice. Sharing our life stories, hopes, dreams, and fears with one another had worn us out.

With some disappointment, we realized we were not going to make it home that day. Mary Jane called her folks to prepare them for a crowd, and oh, yes, would they also please call each of our parents? We got to her house at about two in the morning, got about three hours' sleep, and hit the road again.

I remember looking for the rich, dark fields in the early morning day light on the trip from Indianapolis to my grandparents' farm. Funny how all us kids from Indiana felt we were truly home when we could finally look out of the car windows and see good, old black dirt, instead of red clay.

By then, I had long since given up on my hair-do!