ranger, lived with his wife and three
children in Mermaid, a rural commu-
nity a few miles east of Charlottetown.
He drove to Mermaid Lake, two
miles away, and hiked past drip-
ping spruce and pine and soon en-
tered a cranberry bog. In the bushes
on the shoreline, something flut-
tered and caught his eye. Curious,
he approached to find a silver bal-
loon snagged in the branches of athigh-high bayberry bush. Printed
on one side was a picture of a mer-
maid. When he untangled the string,
he found a soggy piece of paper at the
end of it, wrapped in plastic.
At home, Wade carefully removed
the wet note, allowing it to dry. When
his wife, Donna MacKinnon, came
home later, he said, “Look at this,” and
showed her the balloon and note. In-
trigued, she read: “November 8, 1993.The Magic Key
reader miracleThe year
was 1956. My first husband
and I and our nine-month-old
baby, Pam, moved from St.
Louis to Fort Worth, Texas. He
had a job there, and his family
lived close by as well. We found
a lovely apartment and settled
in quickly. One chilly morning,
I headed for the Laundromat.
I turned on the engine of our
1953 Chevy to warm up the car
and put Pam in her car seat, which
back then was in the front seat. I
locked the car door. Then I put the
basket of laundry in the back seat
and locked the other door. Suddenly,
I realized I had locked the keys and my
baby in the car and locked myself out.
I immediately went into panic mode.
My neighbors had both gone to work,
and there were no cell phones back
then. As I looked up the street, I saw
a red Ford pickup driving toward me.The driver stopped when he saw
me crying and waving my hands.
The man on the passenger side of
the truck got out and said, “I have
a car just like this one; let me
see if my key will open the door.”
It did! I have told so many people
that God was the passenger in a red
Ford pickup in October 1956.
—Evelyn Paine
kennebunkport, maineEvelyn and her daughter, Pam68 dec 2018 )jan 2019
courtesy evelyn paine