So this “vacation” of mine turned into more of a “get-about-halfway-and-have-your-beater-car-explode-cation.” I got about as far as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, when suddenly clouds of noxious smoke came pouring from my engine, which then began to rattle in a most unseemly fashion. Dear God, I thought, what now?! Fortunately, I was, at that very moment, at a highway exit, so I hit the hazards, swerved off, and urgently asked for help from the toolbooth operator. I could barely see her face through the billowing clouds of acrid grey smoke. All I could think was I’ve always seen this in the movies, but never really believed it could happen. I mean, wasn’t it the most clichéd special effect in film history? Does it really happen to real people? Really? For real?
Yes, it does.
So, I blew out my radiator in Denver, Pennsylvania. Minor hitch.
However, with thanks to Al’s Auto Service Station (yes, such a place exists! Not another movie cliché!), I got a new radiator and was back on my way in a mere four hours. I spent the intervening time drinking endless cups of weak coffee served to me between politely clenched teeth by the waitress at a diner next door. I passed the time by listening to the Social Security woes of the toothless denizens of a Pennsylvania farming community. Everyone seemed to be eating an awful lot of rice pudding.
Anyhow, the mechanic got my car rolling again, so off I went, tearing down the highway. Four hours, I thought. Not bad, I thought. I can still make up the time, I thought.
I thought wrong. To properly describe the ensuing events, I’ll put them down as closely as I can to the way in which I experienced them:
Yellow engine light. Hmm. Maybe I’ll stop for gas, and have a look under there. Gas station. Engine won’t start again. Torrential downpour. Night falls. Oh, my gentle Jesus.
Yes, mere minutes later, my car was struggling to turn over, stuck at a gas pump at Mile Marker 258 on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. And for everyone who thinks they know the meaning of the word “godforsaken,” take a spin past Mile Marker 258 on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Dazed, weary, jolted on weak coffee, and with rapidly fading visions of Southern women and the Blue Ridge Mountains in my head, I dialled for road recovery.
At this point I have to throw special recognition to my friends Tedd and John, both of whom stepped up to the plate with great gusto with offers of emergency extraction and internet assistance to guide me out of my predicament. Seriously, guys. You’re dyed-in-the-wool. For real.
I waited it out, though, and the Turnpike Authority promised a dispatch “in about an hour.” Nothing else to be done, I stood in the gas station convenience store, gazing out at my stricken little conveyance, as the pouring rain and gathering darkness began to make it very clear that my vacation had taken an insurmountable turn.
I could not help but think that, though this whole thing had started with a bad movie cliché, as intricate as this situation had become, it was simply not the stuff of movies. I mean, here I was, more than three movie-lengths into a real-life situation, with no end in sight. I mean, if this were Blade Runner, Harrison Ford would have killed Darryl Hannah, like, three times by now! If his flying car had broken down, they’d have had him on his way like that!
Just as my addled brain was trying to devise a means of getting my 1991 Honda retrofitted so I could fly on to Virginia, my road crew showed up. Here’s the guy who’s going to try to screw me out of another three hundred dollars, I thought. I strode out to meet him, trying to look large and serious. After some brief conversation about ways and means, he suggested that, since he was here already and we hadn’t hoisted the car up for towing yet, we might just try to “flash the electrical” on the car. That sounded dangerous, but the perverse side of me thought that, if it caused my car to explode, it would probably be just what that little piece of junk deserved, after that day’s fiascos.
“Why the hell not?” I said. “Let ‘er rip!”
He hooked my car up to the generator on his truck, which was easily the size of my entire car. The dynamo whined to a terrifying crescendo, and to my enormous relief, my engine struggled to life again. Over the roar of my sputtering engine and the hum of the generator, the towman asked where I was headed.
“Virginia,” I said.
“Not tonight, you’re not,” he replied. “There’s pretty much nothing between here and there, and if you break down again, you’ll be in big trouble.”
Impeccable logic. So uttering a prayer and with a vast reluctance, I thanked the towman, and turned out on the road, heading east, back towards Philadelphia.
Fortunately, the car made it the rest of the way back without event (special thanks here to St. Anthony of Padua, Patron of Travellers!). I thereupon took my car to my mechanic in Philadelphia, who, after some investigations, has revealed that the cause of my woes appears to be a blown cylinder head gasket, which has caused aitifreeze to flood the first cylinder of my engine. This of course, requires that the engine be drained, the cylinder head removed, the pistons cleaned out, the gasket replaced, the engine tested, a thousand dollars change hands, and, most of all, it requires me to leave my car in Philadelphia and head back to New England by train.
I suppose these things happen.
I know it’s pretty much useless to worry any more about it. I have my train ticket in hand, and in a few hours, I’ll be heading downtown to hop the line back home. Were I of a pessimistic or nervous disposition, I’d remark to myself that it just cost me fifteen hundred dollars to go nowhere. I’m not going to do that, though. I still had some time out of the office, and away from my studio, so there’s something in that I think. And that little car has really made it through some tight spots before, so all things considered, for it to have made it this far, and with this as the first major repair in about three years, it’s been pretty reliable overall. So, happy birthday, Honda, you’re getting an engine overhaul. Don’t spend it all in one place!
Still, what I wouldn’t give for one of those flying cars…