Wolf Packs Gather
Big disasters usually arrive solo, but small disasters almost always travel in packs, like wolves.
The brake trouble I had upon arriving at a regional convention in York, PA didn’t interfere with the next day’s activities at the golf resort. I was part of a sampling of groups from around the northeast and a friendly bunch. Each chapter hung its official banner and I was proud to see our Binghamton chapter’s five-foot tall, navy blue felt tapestry with various gold awards and honors sewn lovingly and meticulously onto it, illustrating the long decades of our history.
The morning and afternoon sessions were the usual speeches about resources and innovations, reports from service and fund-raising projects and an encouraging future vision from a new national executive. They fed us, gave us extra bursts of energy with nearly endless coffee and the York PA chapter hosts kept us well-supplied with York Peppermint Patties throughout the day.
We recessed just before 4 pm and would reconvene at 6 for an awards banquet—the closing event. That gave me enough time to try to resolve my car’s problem.
If I pressed down very hard on the brake pedal and drove very slowly, I could make it to the closest auto parts store, I set out in search of brake fluid, suspecting that was the issue. The first store clerk was courteous enough, but when two cans of fluid failed to increase the pressure, I knew I needed some expert advice. I asked them if there was a nearby repair shop. Turned out there was, at the end of the parking lot.
When I found the owner just rolling out from under a pick-up, it was already 4:30 on that Saturday afternoon, and 5 was quitting time for the week. He shook his head.
I got back in my car, checked my cell phone and found a second auto parts store just up the road about a quarter of a mile. Again, pressing down hard and going about 15 mph, I made it, and saw on the door they were open until 7. I was surprised to find myself trembling from the effort of bringing my car to a full stop and fearing that it wouldn’t.
Inside, there were four or five customers, I had to wait my turn, but when I was finally next, one of those little miracles that only happen when you’re far from home and in distress occurred. The attendant turned out to be Joey.
He was a slightly built man in his 60’s with a regional accent—Kentucky, he said–and a head of white hair who carried on three conversations at once: two of them with customers he gave his devoted attention to and a third with a colleague who was in the back of the store tracking down parts for him. It felt like I was joining him in the middle of our conversation and he called me “Hon,” and begged for my patience. Finally he was ready to give me his undivided attention, and I detailed the problem.
Two more cans of ineffective brake fluid later, Joey said he thought the brake line needed flushing. Where could I get that done?
Turns out there were lots of places not far, and Joey knew them all on a first-name basis. The problem was, it was now after 5 pm on a Saturday. Most had closed for the weekend or were about to. Not to be deterred, Joey called a few more, describing the nice lady more than 200 miles from home who had no brakes. Finally, he put me onto Ray, a little further than a mile up the road at a Monroe which didn’t close until six.
Once again, driving 15 miles per hour, practically standing upright on my brake pedal I rolled to a stop in front of the shop and went in to see what Ray could do for me. Ray, a slender, dark-haired guy in his thirties, was the manager of the Monroe and holding down the fort while his other mechanics were leaving for the weekend. The phone kept ringing and he kept fielding customers. Several came in to pay and retrieve their vehicles. With less than an hour to go, there was no way he was getting to it that evening. I handed him the keys and Ubered back to the golf resort and just made it to the Banquet dinner in time to get a good seat at a table with two couples I had made friends with earlier in the day.
They were genuinely empathetic to my story of car malfunction but I decided that I didn’t want that tale of woe to be my ID badge for the evening.
“Hey Annabel, remember the time we went to the annual dinner banquet and that nice lady from Binghamton with the car trouble joined us?”
Nuh-uh. I swept it from my thoughts.
It’s so easy, when you’re dealing with incidents like these, to let go unnoticed all the things that go right.
I was able to attend all the convention’s activities, enjoy a delicious dinner with a congenial group of new friends and find what seemed to be a decent, probably affordable mechanic who seemed to know what was wrong with my brakes. I was well-used to riding with Uber, which gave me inexpensive, nearly instantaneous transport and I had a paid-for room for the night, breakfast included. Monroe was open on Sundays, so I had the whole next day to get the work done on my brakes and make it back home before dark.
Plus, I had been attended to by “accidental angels” such as Joey and Ray who didn’t seem to mind going the extra mile or at least being kind about it when they couldn’t. And I was deep into an away-from-home adventure, my first in a long while.
Things could be worse.
But—
I have since decided not to think that way anymore. Because every time I ever say “Things could be worse” they do get worse. Adventure wasn’t done with me yet.