I was remembering this morning the day when I discovered the concept of irony.

I didn’t know the word yet.

I wouldn’t learn the word for a few years more, I suppose.

But the concept became very clear to me one afternoon when I was riding my bicycle from my house on 11th Court West to the gas station that stood at the corner of 11th Court West and Arkadelphia Road.

I was going to buy a Coke and some Fritos or something like that.

Arkadelphia Road is a pretty busy thoroughfare.

Four lanes.

Went from downtown Birmingham out northwest, eventually became Highway 78.

And from there went to Jasper, Alabama and then on to Mississippi.

It was pretty busy.

Cars going up and down it pretty much all the time.

And as I got to Snappy’s service station, I saw that one of those cars had had a mishap right in front of the gas station.

He had smashed right into the light standard and crumpled the front end of his car.

And those were the days when you only had to have a license plate on the back of your car so you could put any sort of message that you wanted on the front.

And he had had a message placed on the front of his, though it was now dangling by one screw.

It was half folded and looked like it was in pretty bad shape like the rest of the car.

And it was a simple message upon this plate.

It said, God is my co-pilot.