As a child, I used to hang out in the Pratt library in east Baltimore by myself.   The public library is where I developed my taste for Science Fiction, Gothic Romance and Black Literature.   I remember coming across Ray Bradbury’s books.  

Recently, I was delighted to find that there was a marathon of his short stories broadcast on Comet tv called The Ray Bradbury Theater on Sunday afternoons.   Ray Bradbury himself speaking about how he came up with story ideas was repeated before each story began.

On September 20, 2020, I saw an episode of a Ray Bradbury short story called “A Miracle of Rare Device” (season 3, episode 2, 7/14/89, starring Pat Harrington, Jr. formerly of the “One day at a time” tv show; Wayne Robson, and William Kircher).   It is a story about two scraggly guys who drove around in their beat-up truck looking for whatever they could find to make money.   There was a less scraggly bully on a motorcycle who was always after them to get whatever they could find.

One day they outran the guy by sheer luck and found an opening in the desert on the side of the road in which they hid.   The more intelligent of the two saw over the horizon a mirage of New York City.  It was hard for his partner to see it, but eventually he did also.

The more resourceful fella figured he could charge one dollar per vehicle for others to see it.   A scam coming, right?   But it turned out that others saw what they really needed to see.   Yes, the two men made money, but to them, it became a miracle for the people who came.   The visitors told them what they saw and it seemed like miracles to the two men, who really started appreciating the mirages as miracles.

Of course, the motorcycle man found out about their money-making and took all their money.  And, although he could not see the mirage at all, he planned on taking over, but none of the people who came after that could see the mirage at all either.    Motorcycle man gave up and left the two honest men there with nothing but their truck, not even the mirage.   But eventually they could see it again and they decided to let people see the mirage for free from now on.  

I cried when the individual people told what they saw and when the men concluded that this was something of God.   I had forgotten how good Ray Bradbury’s stories were.  I’ve seen two marathons so far and look forward to seeing more.

Written by Rosa L. Griffin