Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, was barnstorming in the Midwest in 1966 with a rare biplane, a 1929 Detroit-Parks P-2A Speedster, only eight of which were ever built. In Palmyra, Wisconsin, Bach loaned the plane to a friend, who flipped it over upon landing. The damage was minor and the two men were able to fix everything except one strut. That repair looked hopeless because the part was custom-made for this rare plane.
Just then a man approached who owned the hangar near where they were working, and asked if he could help, offering to let them have any of the parts stored in his three hangars. When Bach explained the rare part he needed, the man walked over to a pile of junk and pointed to the exact part.
Bach concluded: “The odds against our breaking the biplane in a little town that happened to be home to a man with the forty-year-old part to repair it; the odds that he would be on the scene when the event happened; the odds that we’d push the plane right next to his hangar, within ten feet of the part we needed–the odds were so high that coincidence was a foolish answer.” (from Bach’s Nothing by Chance)
