First off, I want to say that I had a lovely time at the Dopefest and that this rant has nothing to do with it, or anyone who was there. No, this rant is about what happened on the way home.
As I’m heading back, I miss my exit onto 840 because the sign’s gone and I take the wrong exit (because it’s the only one with a sign for 840), I quickly realize my mistake and figure I’ll just drive on until I get to an exit, whereby I’ll turn around and head back the right way. Immediately I notice that there’s a problem with the car, the engine doesn’t sound quite right and I realize that it hasn’t shifted into third gear. I play with the gearshift lever, figuring that I’ve probably gotten it inbetween 2nd and Drive again. That doesn’t fix it, so I pull over to check the fluid level in the transmission.
I pull the dipstick out, and see that it’s very low. Okay, I’ve got about a quart of tranny fluid in the trunk, I’ll get that out, dump it in the tranny, in hopes that will work well enough to get me home. So I set the dipstick on the air cleaner go around, open the trunk, get the tranny fluid and the funnel out, pour the tranny fluid into the transmission. Close the hood, put the funnel and empty bottle back in the trunk, shut the lid, get back in the car, and fire her up.
I get maybe 20 yards down the road, and have to pull back over because it’s still not going into gear. I’m basically in the middle of fucking nowhere, so I can’t walk to the nearest store, buy some fluid and then top the tranny off. I grab my cellphone, find that I have service and call my dad. (Not that I want to, but he’s the only person I know most likely to be home right now.)
My step-mother answers, I ask to speak to my dad, she gives him the phone and he asks me what’s up. I tell him roughly where I am, what I’m driving, and that I’ve broken down along the interstate. Remember what I just said.
My dad then asks me why I’m where I’m at, so I tell him. He asks me why I’m driving the Chrysler, so I explain to him about getting the flat tire the other day on the Pontiac and having to drive the Chrysler. There’s some confusion about everything on his part, so I have to explain everything to him again. I then ask him if he can pick up some tranny fluid and come get him.
“I’m in St. Louis.” He replies. :smack: That, of course, explains everything. You see, for the past ten years, whenever my father has gone out of town, I’ve had car problems. It literally has never failed. Once I got the Chrysler, I figured that I’d be safe, since I now had two cars, if one died, I could always drive the other one. What I didn’t think about was that both cars would die on me at the same time. Mind you, we’ve spent nearly ten minutes on the phone at this point, and he’s just now telling me he’s in another Og damned state! So I tell him that I’ll give someone else a call.
I call the Mold Maker from work. He lives close to where I do, and he’s claimed to be a fan of my car, so I figure that he’ll be willing to help me out. Now, he was supposed to work this morning, but called in sick. Now, this doesn’t mean anything, since he hates to work on Saturdays and has a habit of calling in “sick.” His wife answers the phone, and I ask to speak to him, he gets on the phone, and I relay my sob story to him.
In response, I get this song and dance routine about him being asleep, sick, etc., etc. The gist of it, I quickly realize, is that he’s fucked up and he’d rather stay home and screw his wife, then help out a friend. This is bad, but it gets worse.
“So, how did things go at work today?” he asks me.
What. The. Fuck. I’m broken down along side the interstate at 9:30 at night, you’re too damned selfish to come get me (he might have been fucked up, but I could tell from the way his wife sounded when she answered the phone she was sober, so she could have driven the both of them to where I was, if he’d been inclined to ask her to) and instead of hanging up so I can call someone else to come get me, you ask me how things went at work today? :rolleyes: I tell him that it was a normal day, he asks me if the head to his mill came back (You’d think he’d be able to tell with how short I was with him when he asked how today went that he’d get the hint, but no.), and I say that it’ll be back on Monday.
He starts bitching about that, and then apparently realizes that it’d be a good thing if he got off the phone, so he tells me that if I can’t find anyone to give me a hand, that he figures he’ll be feeling well enough by tomorrow to come get me. Yeah, that’s what I want to do, sleep along side the interstate.
I know start running through my head whom I’m most likely to be able to get hold of, to come help me. I call the one friend who should be home and sober and willing to come get me. No answer. I’ve got his cellphone number, but I figure that he’s most likely out at a club or something in Nashville, which means that even if he heard his cellphone, it’d take forever for him to get to where I am.
At this point, I call my brother. I don’t like to do this, since whenever I have a problem, I end up having to call my brother to help me out. As if this isn’t bad enough, he’s always got to help his wife’s family out, and they’re all (as even she admits) worthless pieces of white trash. To say he’s put upon, is putting it mildly.
I call him, explain the situation to him and he agrees to come help me out. He’s an hour’s drive away from where I am. Nothing to do but settle in and wait. Thankfully, the Chrysler’s so big that I can stretch out in the car comfortably. He shows up with 3 quarts of tranny fluid an hour later, and I pop the hood so that we can pour them in. It is at this point, we notice that I forgot to replace the dipstick when I last refilled the tranny. The dipstick is nowhere to be found inside the engine compartment.
We fill the tranny up, look for leaks, don’t see any, but even with flashlights it’s hard to see anything. I start the car, and once he gets in his van, I pull out on to the interstate to head to the nearest exit so we can head home. I make it a mile before I have to pull back over.
I get out, explain to him that the car’s doing the same thing and ask if he saw a big puddle of tranny fluid when I pulled away. He says “Nope.” If it were up to me at this point, I’d just give him a bunch of money, tell him to find the nearest Wal-Mart or whatever and buy a case of tranny fluid, we’d dump that in, and see how far that’d get me. Based on that, we’d figure out how many cases it’d take for me to get home, I’d give him enough money to do that, and I’d spend no doubt the rest of the night driving X number of miles, and then stopping to refill the tranny. It is not up to me, it’s up to my brother. He declares the tranny to be a goner. I don’t argue, I just get a few things out of the car, lock it, and get into his van and he gives me a ride home.
I have no idea what the fuck I’m going to do. Odds are, that as I’m typing this, some worthless punks are busy trashing my car as it sits unprotected along side the interstate. I don’t know anyone I could call in the morning to pick up the car and tow it back to my place, and all the garages are closed tomorrow, so it’s not going to be easy to find a “professional” who’ll be happy to charge me a small fortune to tow the car someplace. Not that I can afford it.
To make matters worse, the plate from the Pontiac is on the Chrysler, so even if she manages to survive unmolested along the interstate until I can get her towed out of there, I can’t drive the Pontiac, and I can’t afford to have the Chrysler fixed rightaway, so it’s not like I could just get it fixed and then go back to driving the Pontiac.
Up until now, my plan had been to get tags for the Chrysler as soon as I could, I was then going to sell the Pontiac, use that money to get a few things fixed on the Chrysler and pay off some bills. That would have put me closer to getting out of this wretched state. Now, I don’t know what I’m going to do. My cat and my Chrysler are only the two things that matter to me any more. I can’t even sell my shit on eBay because I don’t have a bank account (and thus, no way to pay for the auction fees) and I can’t drive to local pawn shops selling my shit, because I’ve got no car!