Open Writing

When I lived at Nab Lane, Mirfield, my next door neighbour Bev and I had a mutual agreement that if either of our cars broke down whilst away from home, one being summoned by telephone the other one would hie out to the scene of the tragedy and make sure the other one got home safely, even if it meant a fifty mile tow.

It was a comforting symbiotic agreement with no fees either way, and no monthly payments to the AA or RAC to meet and no high priced tow truck to present an unknown and non-negotiable amount bill due and payable before the tow rope was unhooked upon reaching our destination.

Living in Arizona, I have no similar scheme in place. That is a frosty thought to have in the Valley of the Sun, but it is a distinct possibility that our faithful tank, a Ford Explorer approaching its eleventh year of transporting, lugging, and hauling, and on the cusp of registering 200,000 miles, will break down, and, as most breakdowns turn out to be, this one will be inconvenient, and I may be forced to exclaim, "Drat it!" when it happens.

However, despite the absence of formal agreements, the ‘network’ seems to be working well, and rescue missions are carried out as and when necessary. Take last night, for example. After our dinner, we decided that it was time to wind up the cat and put the clock out for the night when the telephone rang.

It was a distress call from our daughter Laura, and her husband, Jason who had just completed shopping, along with their darling baby girl, Elise. After they had placed the shopping in the car, put Elise into her safety seat, and strapped themselves in, they found that their car would not start. Jason diagnosed the problem as a dead battery that was probably on its last legs. Could we go and give them a jump start? Our answer was, "We’re on our way."

The next job was to locate the jumper cables in our overstuffed double garage – with space available for one car – somehow. The ‘somehow’ proved elusive as I searched under, over, to the sides of, inside of, and on top of the many boxes and contrivances – some of which are intact – that reside in our ‘excess belongings room.’

Gay suggested that I ask our across the street neighbours, Joe and Donna. But at that point I hadn’t overturned everything we had stored there, one of which I knew was where the ‘only-used-twice’ jumper cables were hiding.

When my resolution to persist in the hunt (that’s not what Gay calls it!) had settled down to allow me to acknowledge defeat, I crossed the road and borrowed Joe’s cables.

The drive to Costco’s car park was no more than two to three miles, and though the car park was milling with people, shopping carts, and people of all ages and sizes, by blowing the horn and flashing the lights we were soon flagged down by Laura and Elise.

After nosing up to their car, both of us opened our bonnets – although Jason insisted that he had opened the hood of his vehicle (Sometimes I think America is a foreign country!), Joe’s cable set were pressed into action.

I revved my rig and Jason turned the key and prayed. His prayers were answered; leading to widespread jubilation that would be no less if it was not a dead battery but a dead person that had been shocked back into life.

After a few minutes holding the Angel Elise, and having failed to persuade her parents to let her come with us and collect her in a week or so, each family group returned to their respective vehicle, and there in the moonlit darkness of a January night, with the temperature dropping dramatically to about 65 Fahrenheit, we bid each other farewell and turned again home, one of us intending to go to an all night battery shop and rid themselves of the uncertainty that is attendant on a dickey battery.

The several segments of this story are not by themselves significant. However, when they meet and result in the alleviation of anxiety, uncertainty, and making sure that a babe sleeps safely in her own cot tonight, they add up to a wondrous whole that underscores the importance to a happy life of good neighbours, good friends, and good families.

The story should end there, but I have to make a confession. Oh, the story as I have related it is true. But there is evidence that Joe and Donna need not have been pulled into the solution, not that they minded, for they are the kind of neighbours everyone ought to have next door, or close by.

We had been home almost an hour when I had one of those sudden flashes of brilliance – such that occasionally illuminate the lives, minds and memories of sad souls afflicted by the dimming of their mental lustre, that has reached the stage of dimming as quickly as the sun sets.

This moment of inspiration informed me by inner vision of the place I had ‘safely’ cached the treasured cables. I almost fear to confess the place lest anyone should write me off as having graduated ‘summer come loudly’ three degrees below a basinful of warm, insipid, twenty-year-old horse-hoof jelly.

Alright, I’ll tell you if you stop laughing! The apparition clearly showed me, in living colour, the small compartment where I keep the pillar-jack used to raise the rig when a tyre needs changing.

"That’s nice," you say. And I’d agree with you if it wasn’t for the fact that all I had to do to find it without divine intervention, was to lift the tailgate and open the secret compartment at the left hand side, over the back end of the inner wheel arch!

Copyright © 2009 – Ronnie Bray
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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