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Hey kids!! Been a while, yes...yes I know. *hangs his head in shame*...I've...well, I don't like telling you this...but I've been writing to another blog. But don't worry, it doesn't mean anything to me, I swear it!! For those of you that have no clue, I've been contributing a lot to America's Deadly Sins, my main girl. She gets all the attention these days, I hate to say it. But never fear!! I've been knockin' 'em dead over there at
http://themightyswordamericas26deadlysins.blogspot.com
and really? You really shoulda come by and check it out, it's the s***, for real!
Anyway, back to you, my faithful little viewers. Compared to the 1200+ views and 725 unsolicited Twitter follows I have on the other one, yours is still in the infancy stage. I do plan to change all that real soon, though, I promise.
We're gonna check into why you SHOULDN'T travel at times. I have for you a tale that relates such bad fortune as to think maybe I was born under the unluckiest star in the cosmos.
*He leans back, and gets that faraway twinkle in his eyes*...Ah yes...I remember it all like it happened yesterday. 'Twas a winter's morn 1986 in the bustling micro-metropolis of Des Moines, Iowa, and I had just purchased my 2nd used car, a 1973 Ford Mustang. From a Mustang fanatic's point of view, this was probably the Mustang's worst model year. One thing the man decided to tell me, almost immediately was (as I myself noticed it) that there was a small snowball sized hole in the floorboard, about 5 inches away from the accelerator. The tires were baby bald...and by baby bald, I mean I would have been afraid to rub my stubbly face against them for fear they'd pop. It was an aptly-called piece o' crap, at a nice affordable $500...so I took it without fanfare, regardless of the issues involved.
Now, I'd had the car for about a month, and it was closing in on winter time, and there were two things that worked in concert against me and my newly acquired piece of property. One, they had been talking about a massive snow system that was going to be moving in, and it was due to be a doozy. They were estimating 18" of snow, then a small break, then another system that would dump around 12" more. The problem with these sorts of weather reports is, they are very much guessing a lot of the time, and about the time they start guessing about something this big, they start talking about it. Next thing you know after about 50 times of hearing it on the radio, and another 50 times seeing it on the news, you very much begin to doubt that it's ever going to happen at all. This is, of course, a very real possibility; many times has a storm been predicted to hit, and it somehow manages to go another way and miss you entirely. I would say the chances of that are probably even better the longer off the first prediction of it is.
Two, there was something very irritating that was wrong with my car. It had been going on for some time, and it finally got on my last nerve. Don't ask what is was, I can't rightly remember. But there are secondary problems that usually don't affect the operation of the vehicle on a serious scale, but are definitely something you want to repair, usually for no better reason than that it bugs the crap out of you because it isn't working right. Things in this category tend to include things like windows that won't roll up or down all the way (or at all), doors that won't lock, the horn quits working, things like that. Well SOMETHING like that was wrong, and I'd had about enough of it.
So I called around to various parts stores in town, and found zip. No one carried the part I wanted, in town. This was certainly more common back in the 80's, when they hadn't as yet put out repair kits and items that commonly break but aren't exactly lucrative for a parts store to carry, like cigarette lighter filaments and certain window parts. It was 4:30 p.m., and certainly too late to hit any junkyards. I made one more effort, and called up some of the more remote suburbs of Des Moines, and finally hit what I wanted in Bondurant, Iowa. I called them up, and they said the store was open 'til five.
Now, something inside me started to scream out. It was my sense of logic, and I obviously wanted no part of it. This gave me only a half-hour to get out of town, around 15 miles or so, and it could have very well waited 'til morning. The tires, which had already been bald when I bought it, were obviously even more bald now, a month or so later. The problem wasn't all THAT serious, that could've waited as well. There was something else, something I had blocked out, filed away way in the back of my noggin, but I just couldn't put my finger on what that something was. I ignored all of this, and headed out. About 2 miles or so from my destination, the weather took a dire change for the worst, and, against all logic, I began to see what I can only define now as a "torrential downpour"...of snow. I've seen rain that came down in torrents, but this is the first time I'd ever seen a gully-washer in white format.
I had to open the door to truly believe what I was seeing through the windshield; and as I looked upwards, I got a face full of snow, shook my head in disbelief, then brought it back inside again. It was the beginning of...yeah, you guessed it..."The great blizzard of '86", the one they'd been plugging for nigh on a week, and I was in it's dead center. If that by itself didn't teach me not to ignore my gut feelings, nothing else in my life would, especially considering the position I was in at that moment.
There was a little bar in this burgh on the side of the road...I had driven past it about a million times, but never really felt the need to go there...til now. No, now it was lookin' REAL good, my possible home away from home. I zoomed in and plunked two quarters in the pay phone and called the parts shop to make sure they were still open..."NO, blizzard!! Gotta lock it up! Sorry!" and I said " no wait, I'm only 5 minute..." and Click!! They hung up on me!
I looked around...it was a lot bigger on the inside. I thought maybe I should gather my thoughts over a beer or two, as long as I was there. There were only 3 people in the whole place: The bartender, a guy passed out at the end, and a real looker sitting by the bartender. Naturally I made a beeline for the spot beside her, figuring since this was the liveliest place in the bar at the time, so surely no one would fault me for wanting to sit there. I struck up a conversation with the beauty, and pretty soon we were talking like old friends. I couldn't believe my good fortune. Then, in the middle of my second beer, the door blew open, and three giant guys waltzed in.
The first two made their way directly to the bartender, with the third guy hanging back a little. I was talking away, and didn't really notice him. Next thing I know, I feel a huge finger tapping on my shoulder.
I whipped around to the sight of a man that was easily twice my girth, with hands that were almost as big as my head. He said, in a voice a normal man with all his wits about him would have easily heard as a slight bullying tone..."You're sitting in my seat".
Now, I gotta tell ya America, my brain must have been on leave, or went AWOL, I can't remember, but I do remember what I said next very well. It was easily the dumbest thing I could have said, surely. Looking around the room, I spat out "Well, I just gotta say, there's about a 100 seats open in this bar, easily. Tell ya what, I'm halfway through this beer, and when I finish, if you're still set on it, I'll give it up to you, OK?" With a look that was half-crazed, then placid immediately, he said..."OK!". Idiot me, I turned around again to continue my conversation.
Next thing I know, WHAM...right to my right temple. After what seemed a lifetime after I initially blacked out, I came to and saw that the truck that ran me over was already being hauled out by his two friends, with the bartender behind me blathering "I can't believe he did that! Dave never hits anybody! Can I get you a shot? On the house!" I turned to say "uh yeah...shot of tequila? I just now got a headache". He grabbed me the tequila, and I slammed it down and proceeded to walk out of the bar. I'd had quite enough of dingy dives and big guys named Dave, and I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. I could already feel my face blowing up.
By now the snow was easily three inches off of the windshield. I fired her up, and sat in the car waiting for the warm-up. As soon as it was able, I slipped it into gear.
Now, obviously, I had been a bit out of it, because I failed to map my path out in what was now the dark, with so much snow coming down you could barely see the road, and I drove right into a ditch. Sitting at the bottom of it, I thought I would never get out, thanks to the wonderful bald tires I still had on the car. Lucky for me, I had just put a 150 lb. weight set in my trunk, or I would have never in life made it out. A fortunate thing that.
Now in a huge hurry to get home, I made a turn onto the main drag back to town. Remember the hole in the floorboard? This was now tunneling snow into the space between the accelerator and the brake pedal as I drove. Driving as fast as I was able, I got about a half a mile down the road, when the window on the driver's side went "WOMP"...right off of its track and in the mucho down position.
There was only one place in town that was open at this time of the day that could do anything about the window, and it was a good 7 miles away from my current position. Nothing could stop the steady stream of snow from coming in from the floor, or through my open window. I pulled into the garage, seven miles hence, with my feet so numb I could barely feel them, sporting a now very black and blue eye, with my hands almost frozen to the wheel. The mechanic came to the window and began to say "Is there some...thing...I ...can..." Without giving him the chance to finish, I glared intently at him with my black eye firmly in view and said "Fix....the goddam....WINDOW!
So kids? The moral of the story? There are indeed times to NOT travel, even on a short basis. And if it feels as though you shouldn't be driving? DON'T DO IT!! Sleep on it. Save it for the next morning, you'll thank me.
Thanks for listening!! :D
