Some of you may have already read this on my Facebook page. It's so funny I thought I would share it again.
I’ve been lucky enough to
hold several jobs in my lifetime. I
can’t say that I’ve enjoyed any of them very much, but that’s beside the
point. One of my many jobs was at
Appalachian Computer Services (ACS) located in London, KY. As I remember, it was very monotonous, and
basically consisted of sitting in front of a computer for eight hours and
keying in various information for different companies. My cousin, Kaye, worked with me. I think she liked the job better than I did
or maybe I’m just more of a complainer.
It was a steady job with benefits, but I hadn’t yet learned how
important that was and I don’t think I appreciated it like I should have.
One Friday we were told we
were going to have to work the next day and it was mandatory that we did. I had already made plans to spend that day
lying in the sun lathered in baby oil and iodine, working on my tan. I felt
put-out when the boss laid the work orders on us.
I rolled out of bed rather
slowly as the alarm clock went off. Kaye
didn’t have a clock so I was to call and wake her up. As I made my way to the phone, I remembered
that it was April Fool’s Day and I had to pull a joke on Kaye. It was 1978; we had just lived through two of
the worst winters in the hills of Kentucky which gave me a perfect idea as what
joke to play on Kaye. As soon as she
answered the phone I said, “Have you looked outside? There must be three feet of snow, I don’t
know if we can make it to work or not.”
“Oh no, let me go see.” Then I
heard her call me some bad names before she even made it back to the
phone. It was decided that I would drive
and that folks is the basis for this whole story.
It was April 1978, my
husband, Mike, and I had only been married a couple years and weren’t exactly
rolling in dough. Our car was a 1973 Chevrolet
Chevelle. It was gold with a blue door
on the driver’s side. The bucket seats
were cool at one time. They swiveled so
it was easy to get out of the car, but the swivel thing was stuck so the seat
swiveled all the time. It was like
riding the Tilt-O-Whirl at the carnival we had every year. If you went around a curve or made any turns,
the seat did too. I was used to the
constant movement and still find it hard to sit still when I drive. Anyhow, we made it to work, put in our four
hours and headed home. The way I figured
it, I could lie in the sun from one until whenever. Despite it just being the first of April, it
was warm, almost hot. I knew some short
cuts so we wouldn’t have to stop at all the traffic lights in town. We were driving through one of the back
streets when all of a sudden we heard a big thud, then the sound of metal on
blacktop and the car’s engine was loud enough to make Dale Earnhardt
proud. I looked through my rear view
mirror and saw the muffler and tail pipe lying in the middle of the road with a
line of traffic already backed up behind it.
I knew that it would be hot, so I used my floor mats to pick it up. I thought about just throwing the whole thing
over in the ditch and head for home, but there were too many witnesses to see
me littering, so I picked it up. Now,
what to do with it? It wouldn’t fit in
the trunk so we had no other option but to put it in the back seat and let the
tail pipe stick out the window. The
whole time I was thinking, at least maybe no one will know me since I didn’t
know many people from London.
We made it to the interstate
in our race car and were laughing about the whole situation. After all it was Saturday, the sun was
shining and we had a day and a half to do whatever we wanted. I was in the passing lane when BOOM, thud,
thump, thump. I realized right away that
the front tire on the passenger side had blown out. I was going about 65 and it was hard to hold the
car in the road. I slowed and pulled
over to the side of the interstate. We
were headed downhill which was going to make jacking the car up hard to do. It wouldn’t have really mattered where we
were, I couldn’t change a tire anyway and Kaye sure couldn’t. I remember Kaye said, “What in the world else
is going to happen today?” We were about
a half a mile from a Shell station that was off the exit. We decided to walk to
the station and either call Mike or find somebody there that could change the
tire. I forgot to mention that I was
about 3 months pregnant and wasn’t feeling 100%. Kaye wasn’t looking forward to that uphill
walk, but she didn’t want to sit in the car by herself. So, off we went to get help.
I noticed, as we started up
the ramp, that there was a truck just sitting on the road side. We were busy talking and walking and didn’t
even look at the truck as we passed it. “You girls having trouble?” The voice startled us since we didn’t notice
someone was with the trunk. We turned to
see a young man with long hair, short cut-off jeans and no shirt. He was sitting on the tailgate putting his
shoes on. I noticed that his license
plate said Michigan. It never occurred
to either of us to be scared of this stranger.
We turned and walked to where he was sitting explaining that we had a
flat and couldn’t change the tire. He
wanted to know if we had a spare and that was the first time I had even thought
about that. I replied, “Well, I don’t
really know, but I think so.” He told us
to get in the truck with him and he’d be happy to change the tire if we had a
spare. We just crawled into the truck
with him like we had known him for years.
I sat beside him, Kaye sat by the door and I was still thinking, “those
are really short cut-offs he’s wearing.”
He told us what city he was from in Michigan and I told him I had a
sister-in-law living in Detroit like there was a chance they knew each
other. I wanted to tell him I was
pregnant, but I thought he probably wouldn’t be interested in that.
We got to the car and I
unlocked the trunk praying that I had a spare tire. I did, but it looked worse than the tire that
had blown out. Mr. Short Shorts got the
jack and tire tools out and began to take the wheel off. For some reason he crawled under the car with
just his lower half sticking out. I have
no idea why he got under the car to change a tire, but there he was. Kaye was still giving me a rough way to
go. She was complaining to no end
standing there on the side of I-75. I
turned my head to tune her out for a minute and when I did I noticed that not
all of Mr. Short Shorts anatomy was tucked away in those little cut-offs. I tried to get Kaye’s attention, but she was
over in the weeds by now. I motioned
with my head for her to come over to me, but she didn’t catch my meaning. I was laughing by now and thinking that this
stranger from Michigan really thought he was something. Imagine the nerve of him showing his junk
right there on the side of the road. He
just laid there under the car, cars zipping by on one side and Kaye behind me
in the weeds complaining on the other.
Funniest thing I ever saw. It
never occurred to me to be afraid that this pervert might harm us. Finally, he crawled out from under the car, picked
up the jack and headed to the trunk to put everything away. I followed him and asked how much I owed him
not thinking he was actually going to tell me an amount. I mean, us hillbillies never charged for
doing a good deed. He wasn’t a hillbilly
though and said, “five dollars will be enough.”
Oops, now what, I didn’t have any money.
I asked Kaye knowing she didn’t have any either, but I was hoping that
somehow she had some stashed away. “No,
she said. I don’t have a dime to my
name.” I looked at Mr. Short Shorts with
the most pitiful look I could muster. He
looked in the trunk and said, “I’ll just take two tapes then.” Mike had a case with all his eight track
tapes in the trunk and Mr. Short Shorts took Bachman Turner Overdrive and
Steppenwolf. Shoot! Mike was going to
kill me, but first I was going to kill him for letting his pregnant wife drive
a ticking time bomb of a car.
We bid our angel in cut-offs
goodbye and started on the last leg home.
It being warm, we had the windows down.
I was screaming at Kaye because she couldn’t hear me over the roar of
the engine, that she had missed the indecent exposure show, which she didn’t
believe, and discussing that our families were probably worried to death about
us because we were about a hour late by now, when something went flying out the
window on Kaye’s side. Now what? Surely that wasn’t part of the car. Guess what? It was. It was a fake wood panel that was beside the
small back window. We figured it wasn’t
very important because the engine was still running…loudly.
By now I was thinking what
could happen next. The gas hand didn’t
work so I assumed we should be running on empty very soon. By the grace of God, we made it home about
2:00. We pulled in the drive-way making
enough noise to wake the dead and with the tailpipe and muffler hanging its
head out the window. We thought our
mothers and Mike would be standing in the yard wringing their hands with worry,
but they weren’t. We went inside excited
to tell our story and everyone was so busy talking they never even looked up at
us. I said, “Were you all worried about us being
late?” Mom said, “No, I didn’t even know
you were late.” At that, I lost it. I started telling our story, loudly because I
had gotten used to screaming by then, and almost in tears. The whole family busted out in laughter,
especially my
“worried” husband. I was so mad. When you’ve had a day like I had just had, you have to blame the husband, right?
“worried” husband. I was so mad. When you’ve had a day like I had just had, you have to blame the husband, right?
As I look back on that day, I
think the worst part was that my mother and my aunt, both widows, wanted every
detail about Mr. Short Shorts.
We never worked overtime at
ACS again and I’ve never had another flat tire. Thank God.
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