Vox Lucens

Yesterday was supposed to be a good day. Big plans of enjoyable things–heading up to NC for the wedding of a friend from high school, replete with old acquaintances that I hadn’t seen in ages.

So there I am, tooling along 77 north of Columbia, when my yellow gas warning light comes on. Sighing to myself about gas prices, I head for the nearest exit. I notice that there are no gas indicator signs at this exit, but heck, there’s a town, and towns have to have gas stations.

I pull off and take a left towards White Oak. I drive. And drive. And see lots of trees. And not much else.

Lo and behold! An intersection! With a sign that says “6 miles to White Oak.”

Sigh.

But my gas will last that long, and I have time, so I truck on toward White Oak. When I get there, though, no gas. I actually think that the town consisted of one white oak, and nothing else–it was aptly named, I will give it that. At this point I don’t have enough gas to get back to the highway, and with the indicator riding “E” I start to stress.

But I keep driving–through the pouring rain, I might add–in the spirit of Ponce de Leon, searching for the ever elusive Fountain of Fuel. I was exactly as successful as he was. I drove, and drove, and drove, and saw hundreds of trees, a campground, some houses, and about 4 other cars.

But I got excited when I saw an intersection with an important looking highway. The indicator is below “E” as I realize that intersection does not equal gas, but I plug onward. I ride through the town of Blackstock, with no gas, and realize that the next town is going to be further away than I have gas for, so I turn around in a last desperate hope to find gas.

I tried to turn around, that is. And you may be surprised to know at this juncture that I never actually ran out of gas.

I pulled into a random driveway, and as I pulled out my car stopped. The engine revved, but nothing happened. There I sat, straddling the road, waiting for the first car to come around the bend and spin me like a runaway dreidel. Not liking that idea, and unable to get my car to go forward, I put it in reverse and gently rolled down the hill into the ditch.

I’m in the ditch, thinking I’m out of gas, and wondering what is going to happen. A car pulls up next to me and the gentleman informs me there is no gas station within 25 miles. So much for my theories that towns require gas stations. I walk down the driveway to discover two men and three dogs in a workshop, explain my predicament, and drive back up to the road in a monstrous Dodge with a gas can in the back.

After putting the gas in the car, it starts up, but I’m at a steep angle in the ditch, and my transmission sure isn’t catching. So they haul me out of the ditch with the monstrous Dodge.

At that point, sitting in the wrong lane and facing oncoming traffic, pulling my car into gear and revving the engine with nothing happening, I began to realize a very painful conclusion. Later that conclusion was brought to full agony when my mechanic told me, “That is how those transmissions generally die.” And die mine did.

But I have been reminded how gracious folks are, and what a blessing that is. The family whose driveway I invaded were kind, and gave their time at a moments notice to assist some stranger who landed in their ditch. Though they may be the quintessential northern-SC rednecks, they showed their true colors–hearts of gold. And they blessed me.

And so have the many others that gave of their time, their vehicles, and their advice to help me get out of this jam. I’m not out of it yet, but thanks to the many wonderful people God has put into my life, I should be soon.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 16th, 2008 at 6:53 pm and is filed under Personal, Travelogue. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.