Many years ago, when Mrs. Khangol and I were newlyweds, we were driving across state to visit my parents for Easter. We left Friday evening after work for the three-hour drive. It had been raining on and off all day, but we didn’t realize it had been raining very heavily in other parts of the state, to the point that some roads were flooding.
On a small two-lane state highway, we came over a small rise and drove into what had become a pond: the ditches had overflowed and there was over a foot of standing water across the highway. It was around 9pm, a very dark night, I was doing around 60mph, and had absolutely no chance to stop or even slow much before we hit the water. We went water skiing, the car under no control of mine, and ended up in the ditch on the far side of the road, where it settled quickly until the water was up to the steering wheel.
We were out in the country, many files from anything like a town. But there was a house about a quarter of a mile up the road, with lights in the windows. We slogged out of the car and made our way toward it, soaking wet, muddy and totally bedraggled. This was long before the advent of cell phones.
I helped my wife up the steps to the porch and knocked on the door. An elderly lady answered, looking like a Norman Rockwell grandmother, from the apron she was wearing to the gray hair done up in a bun. I know how we must have looked to her, but as soon as I told her the situation, she took us in, gave us hot coffee and cookies, brought a phone book and a phone, and let me call a tow truck. While we waited she clucked over us and refilled our coffee and offered to cook us some eggs.
When the tow truck arrived, we walked (waded) back down the road to our car. The driver of the truck was looking at the situation, and when we greeted him, he told us it was going to be a bigger job than he expected, or could handle alone; he was going to have to get some help. But he said the first thing he had to do was get us out of the rain. We got into his truck and he drove us the fifteen miles or so to his home (where he had been sitting, warm and dry, when we called – his garage was closed at night, but his line was routed to ring at home for tow calls).
He took us into his house, introduced his wife, and explained the situation. She found us dry clothes, put ours in to wash, made us a pot of coffee, gave us food, and let us call my parents (long distance). Meanwhile, her husband went back out into the rain to pick up a guy who worked for him and they went to get our car.
For the next couple hours we sat in those people’s home, warm and dry, chatting and watching television. The two men got our car out of the ditch and towed it back to the garage, and immediately began to work on it to do what they could to get it drained and running, which mainly involved changing the oil and flushing the cooling system. Our host called the local sheriff’s office to let them know that “the highway is flooded again” (apparently it was a common problem spot – he called the deputy he talked to by his first name) and somebody should go out and put up the High Water signs and the smudge pots.
Around 2am the owner of the garage came home and said our car was working, though of course the seats were very wet. We changed back into our own clothes, and I apprehensively asked him how much I owed him.
He charged us (as I recall) $20 for the tow, and also for the filter, oil and coolant he’d replaced. He charged us nothing for the labor. The bill still came to more cash than I had on hand; we were very young newlyweds and didn’t have a credit card. (Way back then, I knew very few people who did.) He took our out-of-town personal check without even blinking an eye. We thanked him and his wife profusely and with great sincerity, then got into the car (squishy, but running), and finished the drive to my parents’ place.
Those people – the old woman who let us into her home and fussed over us while we waited for the tow truck, the garage owner and his wife – showed such incredible kindness and thoughtfulness to two young people in need, that we have never forgotten them. Had we not met up with such good, decent people, our memories of that night would be very different.
