It's Going to Get Worse

Moving right along from yesterday...

We're in southern Illinois on a dark highway, it's late, and the car is telling me, in a most dramatic fashion, that its electrical system is very, very unhappy. As suddenly as the dashboard hysteria began, so it stopped. The beeping and blinking of the warning stopped, that is, and the car kept running. The city of Effingham pops up in front of us and that's the end of our early departure day as we check in to the nearest motel. It will not, as it turns out, be the end of the electronic adventure.

We decamped early on Saturday morning. My son assures me that he is dumbfounded by his car's behavior, saying it only did this recently a couple times. Upon further review, we learn that "a couple" is an undetermined number extending back over the summer. As we reenter the interstate, the voltage meter begins descending as steadily as the U.S. economy, accompanied by an occasional sharp trill from the warning system, the same electo-hysteria we met last night. After about 15 minutes, I pull off to a fuel center, buy a tool set (that would be the set that 6 said he didn't need), top off the battery water and tighten the cables and hope we've found the issue. Just in case, I grab from the counter a business card for "Dynamite Emergency Service" (sounds ominous), located at some undetermined distance further south along the interstate.

We're back on the road for maybe five minutes when the voltmeter needle starts plummeting. I call Dynamite and get a gravel voiced gent who hears my symptoms and is unconvinced when I suggest it may be the alternator. He says his shop is 7 miles down the interstate, he'll be there soon, and encourages me to try to make it that far.

We make it, pull into a gravel lot dotted with assorted auto hulks, and park in front of the firmly closed garage door. I turn off the car, get out and try the service door. Locked. No sign of life, just a ski boat and a half a Chevy Blazer inside.

We sit down and wait, there in a gravel lot in some little town a dozen miles south of Ina, Ilinois, across from a quickie mart gas stop and not much else, as the morning heat starts to rise. I'm not optimistic about getting anywhere in the near future, much less getting 6 to Tampa.

Then we wait some more. Then some more. After 15 or 20 minutes, a little SUV pulls into the lot, and a man in a t-shirt and night reflective pants pops out, a cigarette in one hand and a Diet Coke in the other, followed by four small children.

"Hey. Keith. Brought the troops."

Keith unlocks the garage and growls "pull her in".

No, sorry. Cannot do that. The car has died. Three clicks and...silence. The car has brought us to Keith, and it cannot go one inch further. It is muerte, here in this gravel lot next to the interstate. Keith and "the troops" stare at the car, and us, wordlessly.

Now, if you're getting a creepy feeling from all this, good, 'cause so was I. I am imagining all sorts of bad outcomes, including lots of money changing hands and lots of time being spent here in...wherever we are.

I will fast forward at this point. Keith is knowledgeable, very skilled, friendly, and very fast. He gets the car started, diagnoses the problem (the alternator), gets a replacement delivered and installed and we are on our way in a little over an hour more, and for less than it would have cost at home. If we stayed on the road, we'd have broken down within 15 or twenty minutes. Disaster averted, and a reminder of how nice strangers can be.

An hour later we are in Metropolis, Illinois, posing with the big Superman statue next to City Hall. Then we head to Harrah's, just down the street from Superman, where Mimsy and I (mostly Mimsy) win back most of the cost of the car repair. Pretty sweet.

Tomorrow, the adventure continues as we head for Music City USA.