In the middle of June, we left Columbus with a
fully-loaded van for the 440 mile trip to Hendersonville, NC. The purposes of the trip were to (1) buy a
house for Nancy and me, (2) transport a load of china and books to a
self-storage unit to avoid paying an arm and a leg to movers for these specific
items, and (3) visit possible assisted living facilities for my mother, who
accompanied us on this trip.
Southbound, just over the Kentucky/Virginia border
on Route 23 (in the town of Pound), we had a blowout on a front tire. (While the load factor certainly didn’t help,
we found later that this stretch of road was notorious for having lane
reflectors shred car tires). I unloaded
half of the van to get at the lowering mechanism for the spare tire but, being
of the spare type that hangs underneath the rear of the van, fifteen years of
rust and grime made it impossible to retrieve.
We would have to call AAA for roadside assistance.
As experience would have it, our T-Mobile phones had
no reception in that area. We have found
this to be a constant problem outside of metropolitan areas, so at the end of
our current TM contract we will swallow our distaste for Verizon customer
disservice and switch to them.
From here, the afternoon changed totally for the
positive. I hiked forward on the highway
over a knoll a few hundred yards away, and came upon a Valero gas
station/convenience store. For once, I
had change for the pay phone outside, but the operator at AAA couldn’t hear
anything I was saying. Inside, the clerk
immediately deduced I was not a local, and offered me the use of her cell phone
to call for road assistance. This took
about ten minutes, and I started the hike back to Nancy and my mother.
Immediately upon leaving the store, a Virginia state
trooper pulled into the lot looking for me – he had seen the disabled car,
stopped there, called Dispatch for a service truck to be sent, then set out on
a hunt for me. He drove me back to the
van, called Dispatch again to make sure they knew that my assistance call was
the same as his, and continued on his duties.
During the twenty minutes until the service truck
arrived, three local men stopped to see if we needed additional
assistance. Two just happened to be
driving by, while the third was a regular customer at the Valero outlet and was
sent by that store clerk to check on us.
The AAA truck arrived in due course. As the driver struggled to release our spare
tire, the VA trooper return to make sure our assistance had arrived. He also informed us that there was a tire
repair place no more than a mile from our location, and that he had driven by
to make sure they were open and aware that new business would be coming their
way. Thanking him for his assistance, he
again departed.
By this time, the AAA driver had freed the spare and
mounted it, only to find that it was no longer fully inflated. But, he was also aware of the tire repair
store nearby, and told us to drive slowly on I-23 while he followed to warn and
ward off other drivers. Replacing the
cartons in the back of the van, we set off on the 5-minute drive for
repairs. For most of this drive it felt
as if the tire rim was grinding right into the road, and we were trying to make
enough noise to wake the dead.
The tire dealer, Les Stallard of Roberts Brothers,
Inc., was expecting us and set right to fixing everything. He had a new tire in the exact size we
needed, and even threw in another fully-inflated and mounted temporary spare
just in case we had another tire problem.
While he was doing this, the state trooper drove by yet another time,
undoubtedly checking on us again. The
total bill for all of this, accomplished in less than 30 minutes, was under
$100.
In all, we lost less than 90 minutes out of our day
to fix the unexpected problem and found a small rural town filled with people
ready to drop everything to help someone in need. While we will probably never have reason to
stop there again, I have no doubt that their memory will remain with us for
years.
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