Angel Paterson is one of those supposed suburban myths, his location ostensibly being Paterson, New Jersey. I'd written about him in my now-vaporized MySpace blog, and might not have mentioned him for quite a while but for the fact that I met him again.

At the time I'd written said vaporized blog, a co-worker who lives in Paterson had his life saved under what anyone would call unusual circumstances. He's one of those people who become truly comatose when he goes to sleep, and rousing him can be quite the ordeal. About six weeks ago he was living with his family on the first floor of a three-stroy apartment building. One morning his sister awoke to a feeling of terrific heat, went into the kitchen and saw that the building next to theirs was a ball of fire; she was sensible enough to realize that her building was burning as well, and roused her sister-in-law, he kids, the sister-in-law's little girl...and her brother. She thought. When they got outside it was realized that her brother was still inside. The firemen would not, at this point, let anyone near the two buildings because the intense heat aura surrounding them was melting the plastic on cars ten feet away. Suddenly the brother appeared in the doorway; he turned to look back at the apartment; at that moment a loud ->BOOM!<- erupted behind him, and for a short second it appeared like he would be flung from the porch. The shock pushed him but he stopped dead. When he made his way to safety, he told how there had been a loud pounding noise which woke him up. When he went into the kitchen, he saw the flames in the alley between the two buildings, felt the heat and saw that someone was trying to kick the door to the apartment open. He opened the door to see a mailman standing there, yelling at him to get out; he heard a noise behind him and e firebsll blew the door of one of the inside rooms open, throwing him forward - but the mailman caught him.

Mailman? There was no mailman on the porch, his sister said. What would a mailman be doing here at 6:30 in the morning? There was a mailman who caught me, he insisted. He called up the Paterson Post Office partly to thank the man and partly to prove his sister wrong. Sorry, the post office told him; we have no-one here fitting that description and none of our people live in your neighborhood. Besides, no-one would be delivering mail at 6:30 in the morning.

Those of us from Paterson had figured it out. Angel Paterson had appeared, woke my co-worker and caught him when the interior of the house blew to bits.

I had been hearing about Angel Paterson for decades. He was black, white, Hispanic. He was old, young, and in one instance, a middle-aged black woman who snatched baby from a busy street; the baby's mom, off busy earning Negligent Mother of the Year Award, had started chatting up a friend and hadn't noticed that the little boy had toddled out onto Broadway. In another appearance twelve years ago, a very depressed black man was hanging on the outside rail of the bridge-walkway over the Paterson Falls. Suddenly, he said, there was a man on the bridge right by him. The man yelled, "Don't jump!" The depressed guy let go, only to be one-handed by the stranger over the briderail onto the walkway. This is almost believable but for the fact that the would-be suicide weighed over three hundred fifty pounds, yet the stranger caught him and lifted him over the railing with one hand. When the big guy was plopped onto the walkway of the bridge, the stranger looked him in the eye and said, "Your problems are solvable! Go do something about them!" The big fellow told me that he felt compelled to at least try; within a week his life had become managable. Did he know who the stranger was? "He said his name was Angel Paterson."

After hearing these stories once in a while, you get to wondering. There was one time when a man appeared in the middle of notorious Gouvernour street and yelled out, "There's a car full of guys with guns coming this way! Get inside!" Moments later, the three men who didn't heed the warning were gunned down in what is actually quite rare in Paterson - a driveby shooting. They were also the intended victims, according to word on the street at the time.

Angel Paterson has been saving people for over a hundred years. Some of the people I spoke with in the 1970's, people who were 80 - 90 - 100 years old, said he came up with freed slaves in the Civil war era, riding in on the local Underground Railroad. Others claimed he was a former slave of Alexander Hamilton, the man on the $10 bill and who had founded Patterson - the original spelling - in 1792.

About three weeks later I was going to my home in Clifton by way of River Street. The temperature was already 105 degrees and I felt lousy for lack of sleep - 30 hours - and lack of a good meal. The car I was driving stalled dead one block north of Broadway. I got out and began to shove it off the roadway - River Street is always very busy. But I quickly grew very dizzy from the heat, exhaustion and hunger. Suddenly a voice called out, "Get in the car and steer, I'll push you!" I needed no second invitation and this slender young black guy had me on the side in fifteen seconds. I got out saying "Thank you!" He merely smiled. "What's you're name?," I asked. Smiling more broadly, he said, "You ought to know, Roy, you've been talking about me for over two weeks!" "You know me?,"I asked. I know hundreds if not thousands of people in Paterson but I did not know this guy. I was going to ask further questions, but a truck was headed right for me and I had to stand aside. When I turned to face my rescuer, he was gone. The hair on the back of my neck was standing up, and Sara was yelling that she could see right through him. It was, I have no doubt, Angel Paterson.

Two weeks ago I was about to leave the garage I work out of when I saw a young Hispanic man headed my way. I idly thought, he probably needs a couple of smokes. (We share in Paterson) When he got to my pickup truck, he scooped something off the hood. It was my cellphone. Well, the company cell phone. "Thanks man, "I smiled, "you do need cigarrettes, right?" "Yeah, I do," he replied. I gave him four or five stogs. Sara was yelling something from behind me. I went on and asked, "What's your name, my brother?" He had eyes like Jeffrey Hunter's; smiling, he said,

Angel! You know!" By this time Sara had gotten really loud and I turned to see what had upset her. "He's not solid!," she all but screamed. When I turned back...he was gone. Again, the hair on the back of my neck was standing straight out.

Angel Patterson, the next time we meet, you and I must have a little chat!