Published: March 31, 2008 10:30 pm            

CATHIE SHAFFER: Trip of troubles

The chaos began with five little words: “Let’s go to the cemetery.”

In a moment of either generosity or insanity, my nephews invited the grandgirls to spend their spring break on the farm with him in northwestern Ohio. Figuring my daughter would like company on the way back, I offered to go with her. The trip up went well, and I had no reason to anticipate the return trip being anything but boring.

Oh, was I wrong.

As we rolled out of town, I turned to my daughter and said “Let’s go to the cemetery.” And that’s where the trouble started.

Just past our family plot, there’s a big puddle in the grassed-over gravel drive. So my daughter decided to swing over a little and avoid the worst of the mud.

My big sedan has a mind of its own, and it decided to slide instead of swing and immediately sank in the thawing grass. It took only a quick gun of the accelerator to realize we were in there good.

She tried rocking it out — repeatedly going from drive to reverse quickly — but to no avail. So I slid over to give it a try while she got out and called my nephew for help.

His first reaction was to laugh. And I knew this event was about to enter the realm of family lore when he started snapping pictures of the sunken Lumina with his camera phone.

Soon his buddy showed up with a tow rope, my nephew hooked it on something on the bottom of my car and with help from a hefty pick-up, the car was free.

We heard an odd noise, but everything seemed to be okay. And it was, until we tried to put gas in 70 miles down the road. I say “tried” because the gas went straight from the pump to the ground.

Standing on that gas station lot, looking at the puddle beneath the car, I knew I had to make a decision. The sensible thing, of course, was to head north, back to family.

But I’m a gambler. We started south again, with enough gas to get us past Dayton. Surely, I told my daughter, we’d find an auto repair place some place before that.

We worked the phones as we drove. With a call to a dealership, we discovered it was the hose that went into the gas tank and was a three-minute fix.

With my daughter’s boyfriend on stand-by in case he had to come get us, I got my son busy looking on the Internet for a repair shop along our route.

I was on the phone with him when my daughter shouts “A Firestone truck!” and started looking for some place to turn around on the Interstate. I snapped the phone shut with a quick goodbye and started the hunt for where that truck might have come from.

Our hearts lifted when we spotted a repair shop attached to a truck stop. Mine soared when my daughter walked out, grinning, with a young mechanic behind her.

It did, indeed, only take a few minutes. We profusely thanked the mechanic, who refused payment, and a full tank later, we were heading home.

With the crisis resolved, we relaxed. And a mental picture popped in my mind of Hubby on a celestial porch, my dad sitting beside him, shaking his head and saying, “You see what happens when you leave those women alone?”

CATHIE SHAFFER can be reached at cshaffer@dailyindependent.com or (606) 473-9851.

        

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