I felt really sorry for the guy, he looked like someone stole his puppy.
Or maybe someone had run over his dog with their car.
And it wasn't me, even though it was my car.
Because my car wasn't in good enough shape to run over anyone's dog- at least not if the dog had enough energy to limp into the roadway.
I suppose I should have looked that way, since it was my car, although, it is really Aaron's car, Carla.
You see, Carla decided to stop going.
This happened about two weeks ago.
Her get up and go got up and went and left her not going anywhere.
She, basically, wouldn't' start. And it wasn't the starter.
We know that. We know that because it was just replaced.
So, AAA towed Carla to the transmission shop. The one that Elizabeth Binford recommended.
Elizabeth and her husband Howard, who is not Binford , because she allowed him to retain his maiden name, when they got married, have a collection of older vehicles.
A collection meaning more than enough for the 4 of them. Older meaning, well, one of them dates from my childhood, although not from my early childhood.
Vehciles such as theirs require work to keep going, and I figured that whomever they used could breathe a little life into our 18 or 19 year old car.
After all, Carla isn't' close to my age, even if she is older than my daughter who is in high school. Not that I am at death's door, but if the car was 53 and still running, especially the way we occasionally run her into things , like the mailbox or the garage door or one of our other cars.....
So AAA towed Carla to the transmission shop where she then sat.
And sat.
And sat.
You see, that shop has a good reputation , so it tends to be rather busy.
At any rate, I received a call that Carla was feeling better and I should go pick her up.
It took a day to arrange a ride.
Luckily, I have neighbors who actually like to do favors for me.
Okay, so they also like to do favors for the homeless guy living under the bridge, and anyone they haven't even met , yet. But I can at least pretend that they like to do them for me.
My neighbors came by at about 8:30 this morning, and we took off to the far reaches of Indianapolis- and I am only slightly exaggerating. I think it is a 40 minute drive from my home- and since there is no traffic in Indianapolis, at least none that qualifies as traffic by New York, Los Angelos, or even St. Louis standards, it was a long drive.
We got there, and my kindly neighbors decided that they could not just leave me. They came in and spent the next ten minutes reading the thank you notes from grateful clients that were plastered here there and everywhere.
They also, after reading the letters and accolades, took one of his cards.
Jeff, the transmission guy, took my charge card, and gave me my key.
I drove off, with my kind-hearted neighbors just behind me.
I drove off, making a left out of their parking lot and headed up to the traffic light, where the car died.
Well, it didn't die. It started, it just wouldn't' go into gear.
Not into any gear.
Not first, second, third , fourth, fifth or even reverse. I didn't' really want to go into reverse and back into my ind-hearted neighbor's car. but at the moment I tried it, even reverse was starting to look good as I sat in the left hand turn lane of the major intersection.
In case you are not from Indianapolis, I need to describe this major intersection. The street has three lanes going north and a turn lane, I was in the turn lane. Of course, this was Indianapolsi at about 9:20 AM, so my neighbor's car was behind me, and there were a total of 5 cars in the three lanes to my right. Five. Total.
No one honked.
Why bother, there was plenty of room to maneuver.
The light turned red.
I was still monkeying with the car, and the clutch and the gear stick.
The light turned green again.
Carla still wouldn't go into gear.
I realized the clutch was stck to the floor.
Now, Carla has always had a light clutch, but not this light.
I tried to pry it up with my shoe.
It wouldn't' pry.
I bent down and tried to pull it up with my hand.
By this time, my neighbor had gotten out of his craand come to my window, which I rolled down and explain what I was doing.....
I got the clutch up, got Carla into gear and made a not very classy U-turn and went back to the repair shop.
Jeff was not too happy to see me, or Carla.
That is why he looked like I had run over his puppy.
I felt sorry for him.
If you live in New York, you do not understand this, but Jeff takes great pride in his work, and he was actually upset that Carla was not behaving the way he planned.
He took the car keys back, and I hopped back into my neighbor's car and we drove off to the cemetery.
The people one.
I need to clarify in case you thought we had headed off to an automotive one, and you thought, "Perhaps this was the end of Carla."
My neighbors had planned to visit it, after dropping me off to get Carla, and we were already half way there, so .......
After the cemetery, they dropped me home, to my ailing baby girl- the one that is younger than Carla.
