So there we were around 9 p.m. in the shoulder off of I-25, headed north, just before mile marker 240, with a flat tire and no cell phone. People used to deal with situations like this at call boxes along the side of the highway. Now they're mostly gone. Maybe New Mexico never had call boxes, I don't know.
Now the way to deal with this situation is get out of the car and wave your hands at passing drivers until someone stops and lets you use their cell phone to call a tow truck. That's just what your intrepid Greg did, only I didn't have to stand and wave, for my car was equipped with a cardboard sun blocker one side of which is stamped with a sign that reads "Emergency -- Please Call Police". The wind must have thought this sign was just the thing for its summer wardrobe, because it kept trying to rip it from my hands. Anne had to come out of the car and help me hold on.
There the two of us stood, facing on-coming traffic just a foot away from the road with a faded sign telling people to call the police, waving at the drivers as they passed as though we were trying to alert them to the fine parking opportunities in the desert lot to our left. Indeed, the parking was free, with convenient access to the scrub brush and jackrabbit warrens, but I guess nobody wanted to go there on this fine night. For ten minutes, car after car whipped past our charming tableau. They probably we were their entertainment on the road to Santa Fe. I bet they're still laughing at us now.
Finally, though, a sedan pulled over, and Anne and I walked over to tell the driver what had happened. The driver was a middle-aged woman with pushed-back hair, loose clothes and beads hanging from her rear-view mirror. She told us it was a good thing we had the sign and were waving, because once she had seen a man just standing by his car and she had passed him. Then just afterward, she had had a flat tire, and the same man stopped to help her. He had said, "why should I help you when you didn't stop for me?" Evidently he had gotten help from a tow truck, maybe with his battery or something.
Anyway, she gave me her old-style candy bar sized phone and I called AAA, bending down by her flashing turn signal to read the number on the card. Luckily, I was standing right next to the mile marker, so I knew just where we were stopped. The phone rang, and then went dead as though the call had failed. But then there was a loud double beep, silence, and finally a AAA representative came on, mid-sentence. She was hard to understand, and she didn't sound especially reassuring, but she said someone would be there in about forty-five minutes. They asked for my number, and I explained that my phone was dead and I wouldn't be reachable as I was calling from another person's phone. So now we just had to wait.
I gave the phone back to the woman, who was telling Anne about other times she had helped people by the side of the road. I thanked her, and she drove off.
Anne and I got back into the car and told each other stories to pass the time. The time sure did pass. Forty-five minutes, an hour, an hour and a half, and still no driver. What else was there to do? We got the sign back out, stood by the side of the road again, waved again. The wait wasn't so long this time. A blue Civic soon pulled over, and two college-age girls got out. Their car smelled of incense, and they looked like they were maybe out for a trip to a knitting club but had gotten lost. Blue jeans, sneakers, long brown hair, glasses, concerned faces. One of them, the larger one, gave me her cell phone, an old style just like the woman who had stopped earlier. My guess is that people with smart phones don't pull over to help people. People with smart phones don't do anything helpful, I bet.
I made the call a second time, only I was diverted to AAA of Portland. The recorded message was much easier to hear, and more logically sequenced. The man who came on sounded like he actually cared. His voice was pleasant, he used monosyllabic words, and he was going to solve my problem if at all possible . . . which, as it turns out, it wasn't. "Oh, New Mexico. Sorry. Let me transfer you to the New Mexico branch."
The phone rang again, went dead again. A few seconds later, the loud double beep. The man who came on sounded like maybe his mouth was full of slowly dissolving flour. I explained my problem, and he said, "Wait, mile 240? We sent the driver to mile 140."
"I'm standing right by the sign," I said. "It's 240."
"Well, we'll get that fixed for you, sir. We'll contact the driver and tell him to turn around. He passed you already, so it will take a little longer. He'll be there in about an hour."
As you can imagine, this just instilled me with confidence. I gave the phone back, and heard the end of the girls' conversation with Anne. They were indeed driving to Santa Fe from Portland, but I didn't catch why. I suggested they go back to Portland and thanked them, and we returned to the car to wait.
We had a few more stories to tell each other as the hour approached midnight and one day approached the next, but we were interrupted when a car pulled up behind us. I got out and saw it wasn't the tow truck, but rather a highway patrol car. The officer told me to wait back inside my car. He sat in his driver's seat, door open, looking up my license plate number I guess. Then he came over and I explained why I was pulled over by the side of the highway with my hazard lights on. Not that he asked.
"Oh, I'm sorry, " he said. "Say, you didn't happen to see anybody walking around out here, did you?"
"Just me, and the people who stopped to help."
"Oh, well, I got a call about suspicious men walking to meet each other by the side of the highway. You didn't see them?"
"No, sorry."
"Well, okay. Do you need any help?"
"We have a tow truck coming, I hope."
"Okay. Well, I'll be back in about an hour, so if you're still here, I'll get you some help."
"Thank you."
He drove off. And half an hour later, the tow truck finally came. The driver, whom I will call Loki, came out wiping his eyes and sniffing. He looked about 19 years old, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, with styled blond hair. He looked at my tire, said it was beyond repair; checked my spare tire, which had been destroyed the last time I got a flat and thoughtfully put back in the trunk without my being told that it was now unusable; and asked where I wanted to be towed.
"Santa Fe? Shit. My friends told me I should come out here. They said I should have just stayed home. Santa Fe. Well, I can take you to Santa Fe, but I'd have to charge you. About $79 dollars. Or I could take you to Bernalillo, for about $7, and you could could get a hotel. The price would be about the same for you. I'd recommend Bernalillo."
I thought about it while he filled out a job sheet. "Bernalillo is probably better."
"Okay then. I tried to call you guys, but I got a woman. She was all like, 'They're still there?' I guess you've been out here a while, huh?"
"Jesus. I told them that wasn't my phone."
"Yeah. Also, they told me you were at mile 140. I saw you here, though, and assumed they'd gotten it wrong."
"Yeah, I called back and they said they would change the number. Goddam."
"Well, I'm glad you weren't at mile 140. That would have taken forever. Let's go." He hooked my car up to his truck and told me driving it up there wouldn't hurt the tire. I was, of course, extremely reassured. Then he hopped into my car and drove it up onto the ramp. Anne and I got into the cab, and Loki pulled to the left, onto the division strip. "Usually I'd take an exit and turn around, but shit, no one's out here now anyway. Sorry for cursing, by the way. I'm not supposed to curse on the job. I've been up for a two days. I drank like 20 Rock Stars in a row tonight, and I'm gonna be up until Tuesday. My girl wants to go out on Tuesday, but I'm just gonna tell her to forget it and sleep for two days."
He pulled onto the other side of the highway and flipped on his CD player. The music was a descendant of rap-rock, like Korn but even worse. "I'm not supposed to play this stuff on a job, but I'm gonna fall asleep without it." The first song was about some mix of drugs and sex. No, really. "Aw, this one sucks," Loki said, and skipped to the next track, a ballad sort of number about some sort of mix of drugs and sex. It began to rain. He read a text message (on his smart phone), started writing one back and said, "Hee hee, it's raining and I'm speeding and texting at the same time. Perfectly safe."
Soon Loki took an exit for Bernalillo, and as he came off the ramp approaching a stop sign, he said, "see that stop sign there?"
"Yeah?"
"You were supposed to say no!" He went through it without stopping and soon turned onto a small Bernalillo highway. A pickup truck wouldn't let him in, and he shouted, "Come on, fucker, I'm merging here! Jesus."
Finally, he dropped us at a hotel, and in the parking lot he decided he wouldn't charge us, because didn't want to fill out the paperwork. He backed my car down so I could pull into an empty space, but before I had gotten into the car, a van pulled up and took the space. "Stupid," he said, whether at me or at the van driver, I don't know. Then he got back into his tow truck and roared into the night.
Anne and I got a room, and walked to a tire shop the next morning to replace the flat. As soon as it was ready, we drove to Santa Fe and made it to the library just half an hour after I was supposed to open the place. Not bad, all things considered.
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