Stranded

A travelogue about going nowhere slowly

The ice cream stand across the street was closed, or this story might have been a little happier and fatter

I’d already gotten on the Indiana Toll Road and was a few minutes out of South Bend when I realized my battery light had come on. In retrospect, the smart thing to do would have been to go back to the populated area where I have friends and where hotels are plentiful. But not being a car guy and trusting in my own dumb luck, I reasoned that maybe whatever was wrong would only manifest itself if I shut the van off, so I could at least try to keep going and get home before it died.

I made it about half an hour and the engine started revving at a high RPM, even if I took my foot off the gas. I hit the emergency flashers and got off at the next exit, which was luckily only a couple miles up, and I pulled into a gas station. Random lights on the dashboard were blinking on and off – the ABS, the little icon of the car skidding.

I reasoned that if I could stick to the state route and keep my speed down, I might still be okay, and I got back out on the road. Even at 40-45 miles per hour, the revving continued, and a few blocks later I pulled into another gas station. This time, I shut off the engine, and when I tried to restart it, the console lit up like fireworks and it wouldn’t even try to turn over.

If you ever want a lesson in the fragility of systems, try getting a tow truck on a Sunday night outside of a major city. My call to AAA led to a series of automated text messages, each assuring me that a driver would be assigned to my case soon, and apologizing for the delay. One hour stretched to two, then three. I went into the gas station for a snack and encountered a handwritten NO PUBLIC RESTROOMS sign.

As the third hour began to tick by, a representative finally called to tell me they just didn’t have a driver. Nobody was willing to take me all the way to our garage in Toledo, even with us paying out of pocket for the last portion of the trip (our plan covers 100 miles of towing and I had the audacity to break down 122 miles away). She suggested I put in an appointment for a tow the next morning.

The nearest hotels were a few miles away, and it was a fifteen-minute drive to Elkhart, Goshen, or Shipshewana. I had all my inventory in the back of the van, so I couldn’t leave it unattended and unlocked in a gas station parking lot. I couldn’t even fold the seat back to stretch out enough to sleep. I didn’t have so much as a toothbrush with me, much less a change of clothes or my meds.

I asked if I could get towed at least some of the distance east and dropped at a relatively secure mechanic’s lot, and have my wife drive out to pick me up. The dispatcher seemed dubious that we could even find a tow truck driver for that, but said she’d try. I couldn’t call her back directly and be assured of reaching her, but she said she’d call me as soon as she had information.

I went back in to the gas station, not sure when they were locking up for the night. I explained the situation and the clerk mercifully let me use the bathroom. I repaid his kindness by buying some coffee that I’m pretty sure had been in the urn since before I woke up that morning to head to the record show.

She called back to inform me that the garage in Angola was sending its own truck, manned by the one guy on duty, who’d been working since around 3am and had been on his way home for dinner. It took another hour for him to show up, but show up he did, and Alana was waiting in the parking lot when we got to the garage. We transferred the vinyl over to her car so it didn’t sit in a hot van unattended, and I was finally home some time before 1am.

That’s a pretty large swath of countryside to have no tow trucks available that close to a major traffic artery. Or at least I’d think so? Like other insurance policies, AAA seems to have been built on the idea that hey, maybe we’ll get through today and not that many people will actually need us to do our job. And most days, that works okay, so it’s worth the pain (inflicted solely on other people who pay premiums specifically to avoid it) when it doesn’t.

As annoyed as I was by the situation and the system at large, the individual components of my personal crashout all behaved admirably. Skye was a lifeline on the phone and I don’t doubt that she went above and beyond to get the least worst options in motion for me as fast as she could. The tow truck driver was a godsend and he got me where I needed to be when he could have just as easily begged off that one last trip and left a stranger in a parking lot. Hell, that gas station clerk could have told me to go piss behind a dumpster.

I got the windshield-row seat to the daily human drama that unfolds in any space where we live. Not long before sundown I witnessed a depressing custody handoff, a dad parking a good fifty feet from his ex’s car, hugging each of three kids individually, and sending them across the lot to mom without even a glance in her direction. I tried to befriend a gray cat that sauntered through the scrubby drainage ditch between the station and the Dollar General next door, but it was having none of it.

Now it’s Monday morning, I’ve gotten my wife to work, indulged in my second fast food meal in twelve hours, and I think I’m gonna try to catch a couple more hours’ sleep before we find out how long it’s gonna take and how much it’s gonna cost to keep my long-suffering van on the road for one more season of life. There’s mail to pack and a week of new listings to get started on, but had one guy let one call go to voicemail, I’d still be in that parking lot 122 miles from here, so it seems proper to honor my privilege and luck by crawling back into my own bed for a little bit.

Get well soon