So, last weekend will forever be known as The Epic Car Trip, and it shall be commemorated with a random mention or hopeless shrug every time someone brings up tow trucks, Tiptons, cheap motels, two-hundred mile trips, ice, spinning, or Rockford, Illinois.

As of Friday night, I was making plans with a friend while walking home after drama. I wanted company at the barn, she wanted to meet the horses, sounded like a perfect plan. Except, as I found out the next morning, she couldn’t go. Busy or something; I don’t particularly remember why. So, after I spent the morning laughing with the darling Hesselink children (who triple-teamed me, tackled me, held me down, and tickled me as one of them kindly put blocks on my ear), I went out to a leisurely lunch at a diner with Mom. Sometime over the meal of hash browns and tilapia, as we had an important but ultimately unmemorable discussion, I was reminded of my wish to visit the church in Rockford again. I hadn’t been for a while, so I was due. Besides, I hadn’t had Confession since I last visited, and that was in September! To be honest, I hadn’t had Communion very often either. There is a church in Waterloo, but it isn’t truly home for either Mom or me. I love visiting Sts. Constantine and Helen’s, in Rockford, because of the people I know, the wonderful priest’s guidance, and everything about the church except possibly the choir and the fact that it’s New Calendar. Mom likes to be angry about Greek ethnocentrism, but she likes going to Rockford, too. I have to agree with her about the Greek peculiarities—mention Christopher Columbus, and the first thing out of a Greek man’s mouth is “Christopher is a Greek name.” The second thing is something about the island he lived on being somehow Greek at the time (coulda sworn Genoa was part of Italy, but Greek works too!). The third thing…well, never mind. It’s a long, drawn-out explanation of why the basis for Western Civilization all things good came from Greece. They somehow neglect to explain how, then, Greece isn’t to blame when Westernism is at the fault of everything. But anyways. I wanted to go to Rockford and see the crazy Greeks. Had the idea around 1:30, called up my favorite crazy Greek around 2, and was packed and ready to go by 3. Well, except for the potatoes, but I never did remember those anyway, so it didn’t matter. I was on target to arrive at the Bitsases’ well before bedtime.

Except, see, it’s never that simple. Not with me. So, to keep the balance of smooth and insane in my life, I backed the butt of my car into a snowbank in my driveway and got him stuck. Ain’t it dandy? Just shiny, I know. Well, I did everything I could, from oats to cardboard to decorative rocks, but the tires just kinda spun and Frank didn’t go anywhere. Insert the first tow truck, subtract 40 dollars. By five, finally, I was on the road.

Two and a half hours later it was dark and snowing. It was getting dusky around Dubuque, pretty hard to see by Galena, and the tar-colored sky in Elizabeth and Stockton was only marred by sweetly drifting white flakes. Damn little flakes add up fast, though, so about seven miles out of Stockton, IL, the sheet of ice covering the road was nicely blanketed by a good two inches of the white stuff. Now, my car handles snow and ice well. Frank’s a luxury/sporty/whatever car, even if he is a Buick. But he started to fishtail hugely, in a way he never has before, and as I more-or-less-calmly countered the motion it got worse. I was slowing down, things were going to be fine, and then Frank spun to the right and slid backwards, facing West. For the record, in case you’re three-dimensionally challenged, that’d be the direction I didn’t want to be looking at when in my lane. Exactly 139.3 miles down the road from home, I hit an obliging snowbank. Once again, I didn’t have a hope of getting out alone. This time I don’t think I tried, seeing as the icon hanging from my rear-view mirror was at a 45% angle, and I could see snow up against the driver’s window. I was acutely are of the fact that God was good and I was alive. (Actually, make both of those statements present tense.) Insert second tow truck here, but in a leisurely and small-town manner.

First I called my mom. Then I called the cops. Then I called my insurance company. Yes, in that order. Sheesh, I was fine, you expect me to talk to the police without first assuring Mom that everything was all right? Not that she’d know or care if I called the police first and her second, but it sure made me feel better. Debriefing with her is always a good thing. She has that annoying-but-useful motherly tendency to be right 97.8% of the time. In this case I already knew what to do and I wasn’t panicking, but…again, it made me feel better.

I was fairly peeved that none of the cars who’d seen me spin off stopped to help, but people started pulling over fairly soon. It took a while before someone who stopped had a towing chain, but he was fairly confident that he’d be able to get me out. I still had grand ambitions of making it to Rockford that night. Hah, hah. Oh, the irony. O. Henry would be proud. (He wrote “The Magi,” which always made me vaguely furious at its refusal to have a sane or pleasant ending.) Anyway, the truck ended up stuck in a snowbank about ten, fifteen feet in front of me and Frank. I lent the guy’s girlfriend my hat, since she was shivering rather severely and had forgotten to bring anything but a coat.

Along came another truck with a tow chain. Thankfully, it got Brant (Brad?) and Amber’s truck out safely, but it failed miserably at rescuing me. That truck showed up at the same time the sheriff did, and surprisingly he didn’t ask any questions. He did comment that I didn’t look old enough to drive, but he never asked to see an ID. Trusting small-town people. What wonderful oddities exist in rural areas. And how amusing that it took over 24 hours for me to realize he’d never asked for my ID, because it seemed perfectly normal to me. Wow. NYC would eat me for dinner in about five seconds flat.

So as the 2nd would-be-(amateur)-tow-truck guy decides he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting me out of there, a white car pulls up, blocks the one open lane of traffic the sheriff had been directing cars through, and starts commenting on how stupid it was to try and pull me out of the ditch from the front and how easy it would’ve been to drag Frank out if the chain had been hooked up from behind. I wanted to say something fairly snarky, like “Wow! What wonderful advice! Why didn’t you say that ten minutes ago, Mr. Einstein II?” Instead I waited across the road, by Frank, and listened to White Car Guy and the sheriff figure out, in that dear small-town way, exactly how and if they knew each other. Sheriff had seen White Car Guy around, and said WCG had attended some school that the sheriff knew of, knew a graduate in, or possibly had once attended. Boom, they’re friends, known each other for years. Proof? Sheriff calls me over and tells me that, since he’s the sheriff of the county where my accident was and not where the nearest town is, White Car Guy’s gonna take me to the closest cheap motel. Greeeat. Gee, wasn’t I glad I hadn’t said anything snarky?

White Car Guy says, “Hi. My name is Terry.” First thing I notice is he’s overweight and smoking. But, his car is fairly clean and he has a friendly (kind-uncle-ish, not hi-young-alone-girl-ish) smile. He lets me call and update my mother using his cell phone, since mine is inexplicably low on battery, and when he drops me off at the el cheapo motel he walks me in to make sure there’s a room. Terry even introduces himself to the very-pierced guy behind the counter, although albeit again in that darling small-town way. He says, “Hi. I’m a Tipton. You know any of the Stockton Tiptons?” Guy-behind-the-counter, whose name I believe is Jeff, says  he doesn’t. But, now he knows who Terry is, and so—in that small-town way—they’re now vaguely friends. Or at least acquaintances.

I’ll sum up the next twelve hours in one run-on odd list that could only come from me: random semi-pointless and fairly frustrating calls to the local towing guy and my insurance company’s supposed roadside assistance program, watching just the happy part of an ABC Family made-for-TV movie right before the point in the plot where things get awkward, a clean but sparse two-bed motel room without any shampoo, a cold but decent night’s sleep, waking up too early, Food Network holiday shows that made me drool, the 2nd tow truck coming to pick me up late and then chatting with the woman (Shirley, maybe? Presumably Jeff’s mother?) about car accidents in general and specifically the three-person car-vs.-semi fatality not far from where Frank & I hit that lovely, soft, snowbank a mere meter or two from a less-friendly wire fence, and finally getting Frank out of the ditch.

The tow truck driver, Joe I do believe, also commented on how young I look. As he was dragging my car by the rear tire axle up onto the bed of the tow truck he told me he didn’t think he’d ever let his sixteen-year-old daughter drive so far alone. He also told me about a guy who’d flipped his car so  badly he couldn’t get the darned sedan to flip back over and had to drag it back on its roof; even after another towing guy tried to set it right-side-up and failed, the owner wanted to take it to a body shop and refused to accept that it was totaled. I saw that car. It was totaled. However, once we got back to the NAPA Stockton Service Center, I heard Joe tell some stories to guy who’d wandered over; the towing-upside-down story was one, the three-person fatality was another, and a cute little one about his son taking the car and going to Rockford without asking permission Friday or Saturday night was the last one. Hehe, made me chuckle. Joe cleaned the snow off Frank for me, again because of the whole him-having-a-16-yr-old daughter thing. It was great.

Anyway, I was on the road again (that’s my ringtone, hey!) by 9:30 and at church by half past ten. The rest of the story…well, it’s not much, but it continues the Epic. Unfortunately I’m tired, so I’ll see y’all later.

 

 

 

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