The Long Long Lost Story.

I once was helped out by a white haired wild eyed Vietnam vet I met at the Exxon station. My car had exploded on the highway in a town far from home where I knew no one. After knowing him for about twenty minutes, I got into his windowless custom van and we drove away. This is not an action I would recommend to anyone---I was without a doubt, desperate.

It was 2001 I think, and I was having difficulty getting a job. But I had begun to volunteer at the milk bank again. The Mother's Milk Bank of Austin is a beautiful organization that does just what you'd think they'd do by the way their name sounds. They accept donations of breast milk for pasteurization, processing and distribution in the Texas area. I had worked for them in the past, and when I left I stayed on as a volunteer, mainly for pouring milk for pasteurization, which is a lovely process and a story for another day. Anyway...

They had another volunteer position which involved driving to certain large cities in Texas, visiting hospitals and picking up donations of milk from special freezers, then driving back to Austin and putting the milk in the Mothers' Milk Bank of Austin's (MMBA) freezers.

This volunteer position involved a mileage reimbursement, which I was sadly desperate for at the time. A round trip to Dallas or Houston would yield a nice chunk of change. I had a great car, my parents' eight year old silver Chrystler LHS, with grey leather interior, which they had recently sold to me. I actually could fit 3 or 4 large igloo coolers in the trunk, and 3 or 4 more in the back. These plus the fact that I love to drive made the volunteer driver position perfect for me. After a year of volunteering, I would be employed by MMBA to do this job, but this story takes place on one of my early drives.

Now, my mother swears that when they agreed to sell that car to me, they told me that it had overheating issues that they had attempted to repair to no avail. She swears she told me not to run the air conditioner. But in reality she was still riding some of the crazy manic highs and lows of the steroid treatment for a certain blood disorder she'd been diagnosed with, and I believe she intended to tell me, but unfortunately, did not.

Well I had been driving it around town, sweet A/C full blast, for more than a month, and may have even had it on a milk drive before. But now it was the heat of the Texas summer. I had started off about 10 in the morning. About a mile inside Temple city limits, the car virtually exploded. There was smoke and steam pouring from the radiator, which of course had a hole in it, and it would not start and not even the electricity would come on.

So I was stranded on the side of the highway. I had on faded jeans and Birkenstocks and my boyfriend's long sleeve t-shirt. I think my hair was quite red at the time. I locked the car, and started walking through the weeds on the road side toward a gas station I saw in the distance. I think I had about seven bucks on me, probably less, no credit cards. No clue of a plan. When I got to the gas station I bought a cup of coffee and got the change mostly in quarters.

While I was doctoring my coffee and trying to stay composed, this older guy came over with his coffee and sort of smiled at me, sort of gave me a look over. He asked, "Where are you headed?"

Now you know how certain white haired gentlemen you can instantly recognize as the sweet and harmless grandfatherly type? And some others you just do not. With him I did not. But I needed help.

"Well," I said, "Right now I am going to sit right down on that curb outside and drink this coffee."

He paused and looked around us without moving his head. "How about I join you?"

Now I almost always prefer to be alone in times of sheer panic, and given time to get a grip, but I told him, "Sure."

He had trouble sitting down, and told me that actually one of his legs was prosthetic. "But if you think it is okay," he said, "I have a van just over there that we could go sit in an drink our coffees, and you could tell me what the problem is. I was just driving down the highway a while ago, I like to drive, and I saw you walking, and I said to myself, that girl needs help. Maybe I can help her. So I drove over here."

I know he could probably feel me judging him as I examined his face hard for a few seconds. "Okay."

Essentially I told him about my milk drive, and about the car and the coolers. The car was a bust. This trip was a bust. I needed to get myself and those coolers back to Austin. I had no money and no one there could come and get me. I could have called my boyfriend. But he was working and more broke than me anyway, and we did not need him to ask to leave his job to come and get me.

He told me that he could not take me to Austin or give me any money but that he hoped he could help me. He said he knew of a gas station where a bus sometimes went through, and if we were lucky maybe it would go through today. He called it the Indian store. He was friends with the Indian brothers who ran it, and he could drive me there now.

Before we left I tried to call my boyfriend at work but couldn't get through. I called and left a message on our answering machine, including the license plate number of the van. I got in the van again with him and we drove off. While we were on the road I notice there were some modifications to the steering column and pedals of his van. I also noticed there were no seats except the front ones, and there was a mattress in the back. He noticed me notice the mattress and said, "Sometimes I like to drive in the country and pull over and take a nap. Or sometimes me and the missus will sleep back there when we travel." Made perfect sense.

The "Indian store" was one of those super divey non-chain gas stations. There was a booth seat in one section of the store. He gestured for me to have a seat and I did. We sat there for a minute looking out of the glass wall store front, expectantly, for what? He got up and had a chat with the store keeper, to let them know what we were up to: hoping for a bus. (While they were talking I noticed the fully accessible magazine rack to my back was filled with cheesy skin magazines, in a catagory way beyond Playboy, ya'll. This was not the kiddie section.) The bus in question did not have any actual scheduled stop at the Indian store, ever. The driver just had a habit of stopping for gasoline there.

After about twenty minutes of waiting, I was nevertheless sort of amazed when a small commercial silver and blue bus turned up. I saw my white haired friend get a vigilant scout look in his eyes and demeanor. It was uncanny. He had icy blue eyes and was quite tan. We watched some kids file out of the bus and into the store. He pointed at the uniformed guy pumping gas. "That's the driver. When he comes in here, after he pays, I'll see if I can't talk to him."

It turned out that he was headed with this group, a church group, into Dallas, and would be returning with an empty bus on the way back to San Antonio around eight pm. He agreed to take me and all my coolers back to Austin if I was there when he passed through. For nothing. Amazing.

So there was a long time to wait and I still needed to do something about my car. My friend "knew a guy." He talked to the guy and the guy agreed to tow it off the highway to a nearby parking lot and look at it. We all met there. It was obvious the car was not going anywhere with any quick fix. Now, if I had been clever or rich I would have called a dealership and asked them to tow it to their shop. But I was not. This "friend" had his own "shade tree garage" at his house out in the country, and he agreed to take it there and to work with me if I paid him over time for parts to get it fixed. What could I do? I agreed. (In the end, four months later, this arrangement did not work out, and my father had to go out to his place and retrieve the vehicle, which is a whole other story. I refer to this time as my public transportation initiation period.)

So I put the coolers in his van, and we drove around. I told him I wanted to try again to call someone from home and let them know what was going on, that I could call collect, maybe from his house? He explained that his lady was still working her shift at a nursing home, and that I was "so pretty" he'd better wait until she was home to let me use their phone.

We drove around. He said he knew this great Mexican food place, and asked if I would eat lunch with him. Of course I said sure. We ate and talked about not too much. It was quiet but relaxed, and the food was great. At some point he used the phone and called his wife and let her know we would be coming by.

We had some time before his wife would be home from work. He drove us to the hospital. He wove through the sprawling parking lot to one edge overlooking a hill. There was a view of the whole city, and the sky was changing from blue to pink and orange. He talked to me about his wife, who was dealing with an ongoing medical condition. He said he came out here sometimes while he waited for her to have exams a t the hospital. He removed his prosthesis and rubbed his leg. We talked but not too much. I thanked him. I told him I felt so much more hopeful than I had in the morning before I met him, and that under the circumstances things were turning out much better than my worst fears.

We drove to his house. It was small and tidy. His wife was petite and nice. I used the phone and called home, collect. My boyfriend answered. Explaining everything to him was hell. If nothing had gone wrong I would be coming home about then. But the situation as it was was frustrating for him to try to grasp. I think he felt helpless, but he acted angry. He said, "What guy?! You are at some guy's house?! Who is he!!!?" He was off the wall. I said, "For crying out loud, he's your dad!" I meant this metaphorically, and after that he calmed down. After I talked to him, I called my parents and told them what was going on. I felt so contrite when I spoke to them. I had somehow destroyed the car. Only later would I find out that this was a recurring theme, the radiator issue.

He took me and my coolers to the Indian store. He waited inside at the table surrounded by the magazines. We had gotten the coolers out of his van, and they were outside on the curb, so I felt I needed to stay with them. We watched out, with the glass wall between us, for the bus to return. And it did.

The journey home was unremarkable except for a fuel stop on the edge of Austin. The bus driver dropped me off at my door, and said, "Hey no problem," when I thanked him. I still had a ton to deal with: crazed boyfriend, broken car, job not done. But at least I was home. It felt a bit miraculous.