“It was already a weird day, & feeling a bit deflated as one does waiting for a tow truck to arrive, I began to pace the porch of the general store, and idly read the signage. My eyes ran over the usual, and the unusual, then back again to the ice machine. “Oh dear lord, am I having a migraine?” I thought to myself. I stared at the letters, just three of them, looking for the most part typical for a roadside ice machine, but reading “IEC”. I looked away, thinking if there was a problem, it should clear up and be gone by the time I looked again. I looked again. It still read “IEC”. Damnit all to hell. It wasn’t my fault that I needed a sheet rock bucket to stand on, to reach my dip stick. And that maybe I avoided doing that, because of that, more often than not. Had I run the truck out of oil? Really? Sure, it had stuttered, and we had both gone quiet, then we passed a police car parked by the elementary school, and I turned my attention to my speedometer. Oh, right, there’s now a menu involved, just to get to the speedometer, especially when your electronics are starting to short out. Would we make it up the next hill? The store was only a short jog downhill, from there. We could coast, if we had to. Funny how rapidly the mind takes stock of all available information, when put into a pickle. So that’s where we found ourselves, lounging on the porch of the general store, in a town smaller than my own, drinking 2nd cups of coffee we didn’t want, while one overly friendly person after the next, smiled at us and perhaps said a word, while heading past the “IEC” machine, on in for a breakfast sandwich and/or newspaper. One guy caught on and wanted to help us. And frankly, I would have spent the whole day with him, if it meant getting my truck back on the road. But I had to beg off. “Thanks, but we’re waiting for the tow truck,” I said, with no hidden innuendo. Of course my text to my client telling him we’d be an hour behind schedule did not make it out of dodge. It’s hard to trace a problem, these days. Long gone are the tin can and string contraptions we used to call “technology”; the ones that actually could be fixed when they broke, and never needed to be upgraded. You could drive a clunker into the ground, if that struck your fancy. Today I found out, my rocker panels are not going to pass their required yearly exam, and in one short phone call, my work truck, my pleasure vehicle, and maybe my best friend who seen me through thin for at least five years of the most spectacular pandemics & unwanted transitions I ever knew, will be sent to the scrap heap or valued, as such. That load of Premier garden mix I transported to a camp on Lake Champlain, will not happen again, anytime soon. All right, this might be partially about vehicle inspections, and how cruelly elitist they’ve become. Whatever. We used our natural ingenuity, to get to the job and do a bang up job, that day. Our client was my timber framer, an exceptional craftsman who built me a frame, while I rebuilt his garden. We got ways, and we got ways. In Vermont, we will continue, I hope, to have ways.”
