What?  Surely the title is an anachronism, an absurd term in today’s world.  Why, yes it is quite absurd and that is the point.  Time’s arrow moves in one direction only.  According to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, energy seeks equilibrium.  It dissipates, no exceptions.  Unless there is a twist of fate.

What I mean to say by the term resurrection, is that the reasonable sequence of cause and effect is sometimes interrupted by factors hidden, not taken into account.  One gets, as it were, a second lease on life.  Catastrophe– mindless, inexorable ruin does not occur by dint of shear luck.

From my high school years a memory is indelibly imprinted.  Four of us were in a 55 Chevy on the way to school on a frosty fall morning.  The 283 motor screamed as the rear tires bit the asphalt on the road that lead to the bridge over the river in the distance.  It was exhilarating.  In front of us to our right, a pickup truck with farm workers seated in the bed behind the cab, pulled out of a side road into our lane.  We swerved into the opposing lane.  I remember the frozen faces of farm workers flashing by.  But we lived.  The story of our lives could have ended there, with a dark screen written in cursive script: The End.

A member of our local Starbucks community told me such a resurrection story.  JJ has a beautiful late model corvette, which he sometimes brings by on the weekend.  I love corvettes, –the low slung, muscular, aerodynamic form, with the big block motor tuned for performance.  I asked him about the car because I had not seen it for a while.  He told me this story.

Early on a fine October morning JJ was driving his corvette on Route 12 toward Lake Geneva.  Ahead it appeared that ground fog was drifting across the road from the adjacent farm field.  Nothing unusual for a early morning in rural Wisconsin.  Reaching the very edge of the “fog” JJ recognized that a heavy duty pickup truck towing a trailer filled with concrete debris had just lost control, leaving the road–strewing chunks of concrete and dust over the roadway.  There was no time to stop, or even apply brakes.  Nothing to do but hang on and pray.

I cannot imagine the sound of a low slung corvette driving over big pieces of concrete.  The jagged pieces must have sounded like exploding grenades slamming the under carriage, exhaust and suspension members.  There are so many possibilities for totally wrecking the vehicle or even worse flipping the vehicle to fatally injure the driver.  You can guess how the story ends.  JJ reported that unaccountably the damage to the undercarriage was much less than he anticipated.  Several weeks in the body shop resulted in a “like new” car delivered, ready for his enjoyment.  Not even the expensive alloy wheels were wrecked.  Just a small ding that was reconditioned.

Resurrection!  It happens.  I’ll take it.