On Friday morning I left the house with the intention of going to Hot Springs to pick up Daughter Number Two for the weekend. What follows is an in-depth description of what a fiasco that adventure turned out to be.
I should preface this by saying that I do not own a car of my own. The drawback to surviving on a disability check is that I cannot afford the insurance, tags, gasoline, and maintenance that a vehicle requires. Throw in the fact that the Money Faeries have steadily refused to drop the down-payment and monthly payments out of the sky and it’s suddenly very understandable why I don’t own an automobile.
I do, however, have the world’s most understanding mother-in-law. She has been allowing me to use her vehicles as long as I replace the gasoline I use and drive sensibly. This is the reason I was driving her van back in February when it got rolled by a passing tornado.
Because the van was totaled in February (and, as far as I know, FEMA still hasn’t made a decision about what, if anything, they’re going to pay her for it!!) there has been one car to handle all the trips to America’s Largest Retailer, the doctor’s offices, trips to Hot Springs, Karate classes, panicked trips to the hospital, and everything else. It’s been ..erm… fun … scheduling who needs to use the car and when.
I left here around 10:15 on Friday morning with plans to arrive in Hot Springs around 2:00pm. This allows an extra 20 minutes for the 4 or 5 ‘pit stops’ I normally have to make thanks to the fact that I take Lasix every day.
Things were going normally and I was about 16 miles from my destination when I heard “crunch” from somewhere. I listened and didn’t hear anything else. I didn’t notice any problem with the car, so I assumed it must have been something in the road.
It wasn’t.
About 10 minutes later, for no discernible reason whatsoever, the engine quit and I had to coast the car onto the shoulder. Repeated attempts couldn’t convince the car to start, so I quit before I killed the battery. Looking under the hood, I didn’t see anything obviously wrong. Bear in mind, please, that my mechanical expertise is limited to adding motor oil and, maybe, changing spark plugs provided they’re easy to get to. First off, my twisted up hands won’t allow me to do much more than that and secondly, I have absolutely no desire to learn any more than that. Other than what I’ve said, my entire knowledge of automotive mechanics can be written legibly on the underside of a quark and I’m pretty much okay with that.
Not knowing what else to do, I picked up my handy-dandy cell phone and called my wife. I’ll admit it: I was a little panicked and needed her calmer head to figure out a solution. She called Daughter Number Two and broke the news that she was probably spending the weekend at school. Next, she called the Saline County sheriff’s office to try and get an officer to at least get me off of the side of the road. The county sheriff insisted she needed to call the state police, who told her they’d have an officer and a wrecker out to me “in a few minutes”. She called me back and told me the wrecker was going to come out and take the car to his shop and drop me at a motel for the night. They were also going to call me for better directions to where I was.
I waited about 10 minutes and they never called, so I called them - my wife had given me their number. I explained that I wasn’t sure if I was in Saline or Garland county. I told them that 10 minutes before the car quit I had passed a sign saying that Hot Springs was 16 miles away so I was guessing I was about 5 miles from there. I gave them the year, make, model, and license tag number of the car. The dispatcher assured me there’d be an officer and a wrecker at my location shortly.
A few minutes later, I got a call from the wrecker service. They needed to know where I was and what I was driving, so I gave them the information I had just given the state police (who said they were going to give all this information to the wrecker). The wrecker service’s dispatcher assured me there’d be someone to get me in 15 minutes or so.
By this time I had already been sitting on the side of the road for 20 minutes or so and not only had there not been one single person stop to see if I needed help, there were 4 or 5 bright individuals who found it necessary to blow their horns as they drove past. The car was WELL off the road. I had room to open the driver’s door all the way and still not go over the white line. Had I gone any farther into the ditch I may very well have rolled the car! I have come to the conclusion that, since the only way these people would have hit me is if they had been driving on the shoulder TRYING to hit me, the only reason for blowing the horn on the way by is because this state is over-run with asshats!
About 15 minutes after the last phone call, one person did finally pull up behind me and ask if I needed help. I explained to him that there was supposed to be a tow truck arriving any minute and thanked him for stopping after confirming that I was, in fact, 5 miles East of Hot Springs. He asked again if I was going to be all right and, when I said yes, went on his way.
Because of the heart trouble I have, combined with the fact that I haven’t been able to sweat since I suffered heat exhaustion about 5 years ago, when the temperature gets over about 75 degrees or if I exert myself at all, I start huffing and puffing, I turn bright red, and I sound like I just ran a couple of miles. I’m thinking the inability to breathe must effect my brain somehow - maybe oxygen deprivation or something - because I turn into a completely different person under those circumstances… one who is not very reasonable.
For example, after I waited 25 minutes for the tow truck that was supposed to be there in 15 minutes, and seeing a couple of Saline County sheriff’s cars zoom by without a second look, I called my wife and asked her to call the police back with a message. I explained that if I talked to them at that moment they’d be out to arrest me. I then went on a full-volume rant about how I was told there’d be someone here 10 minutes ago, I’ve tried 3 times to tell these people that I’m a heart patient and I can’t breathe and if they don’t get someone here right now they were going to need to send an ambulance along with the wrecker and so on.
While I was busy screaming into the phone, who should show up behind me but the Arkansas State Police. Suddenly I’m thinking that he’s probably going to arrest me for Drunk and Disorderly conduct because, thanks to not being able to breathe, my legs are like limp noodles and I can’t walk a straight line.
I got out of the car and started to make my way back to his car. As I turned around I saw the car keys lying on the seat. I distinctly remember turning around, bending over, picking up the keys, and putting them in my pocket before I got in the (wonderfully) air-conditioned police car.
The officer made small talk with me as he tried (unsuccessfully) to get the tow truck driver on the radio. Finally he got the number from his dispatcher and called them. He told them again (this would be at least the 3rd time they were told) where I was, what I was driving, and what the tag number was. He was assured the wrecker would be there any minute; he had to stop for gas and there was a line at the pump.
After the officer got off the phone I realized that I did not, in fact, have the car keys. The officer went to look in the car and found them on the front seat, right where I saw them before I remember picking them up.
About 10 minutes later the tow truck finally arrived. By this time it had been an hour since the car first stopped!
Once the car was secured on the back of the tow truck, we were on our way. I was not quite into the truck yet when the driver noticed my hands and asked what kind of arthritis I had. I told him it was rheumatoid and then I noticed that his hands were in the same condition as my own. I learned that the guy’s name was Wendel, that he was 48 years old, that he started showing arthritis symptoms at about the age of 33 (same as me), and that, except for 2 years, Wendel had spent his entire life in Benton, Arkansas and didn’t recognize the names of towns that were only 50 or 75 miles away. Wendel, frankly, reminded me of Larry the Cabelguy except he didn’t seem to realize that people could understand you easier if you used your lips to form words when you talk instead of just forcing the words out around them.
Wendel dropped me off at a motel whose name I still am not sure of. The passkey to my room said Ramada. The sign out front said Benton Inn, and the receipt I was given said Econolodge.
This is getting on the long side, so I’ll cut it off here and tomorrow I’ll tell you about the room with its teak furniture (NOT!) and the wonderful news the mechanic had about the car.
This wireless mouse from Targus is a full-sized mouse, unlike the micro-mini mouse that my wife has. Given the condition of my hands, that would be a good thing. It also has the advantage of not having a cord or a trackball. The only potential problem I see is that, being wireless, and knowing me, it’d take me about 2 days to lose it completely. On the other hand, at $10 apiece, maybe I could just buy two and hope I never lose them both at once. 
I almost had a heart attack when I saw the gas price today. In this one-horse town there are exactly three gas stations. One is full-service and, therefore, always the most expensive of the three. Yesterday afternoon, both of the other two were at $3.45/gallon. This morning, when I had to buy gas 
they had both gone up 14ยข!
