Last night we were just sitting down to dinner when I got a phone call from my friend Marv. He said, “Jules, I need you,” in a tone that made me think someone had died.

Well, someone hadn’t, but something definitely had. He and Connie were on their way to visit their son in Texas when his Ford took a dump on him going up the Tehachapi mountains. Really long-time readers might remember that I’ve had to go get him in the middle of the night once before, from Pismo several years ago when his transmission took a dump. That was an all-night trip, and I was close to hallucinating from exhaustion by the time we got home.

It was his transmission again, even though he’d had it rebuilt even sturdier and wasn’t even putting much of a load on it. I thought that at least he was closer and at least I wasn’t alone this time. We only had one kid with us, John, and at fourteen he’s old enough to spend a few hours at home by himself. Junior called in a vacation day to work and I serendipitously had the next day off anyway, so we went over to Marv’s to grab his car trailer for what I thought would be a seven hour trip, max.

We got the car trailer all right, but the lights didn’t work and by now it was fully dark. Junior took things apart after figuring out that a loose wire in the trailer plug had shorted all of our truck’s fuses. Wire fixed and fuses replaced and a quick pickup now had us an hour behind.

When we got to them, they’d been towed off the pass to Bakersfield, into a nicely lighted gas station. Marv’s put a winch on the front of the trailer since our last adventure, so getting the truck on it was fairly straightforward even if it barely fits. We were back on the road by about 10:30 and headed home.

But just north of Bakersfield, we heard a “pop.” One of the tires on the trailer had blown, and we didn’t have a spare. Marv hadn’t remembered to tell us to get it and where it was, and we hadn’t seen it to remember ourselves when we were loading up things. And by now it was 11 o’clock, and of course there aren’t any tire shops open that time of day. It was a three-hour drive to go home and get the spare, and another one to come back to put it on. We unhitched the trailer and put the tire in our truck optimistically hoping to come across a place open late, leaving Marv in his truck to keep it from being stolen off the side of the highway.

We’d discussed AAA coverage, but sicne that seems to be limited to towing, initially dismissed it. I finally realized that at least they might be able to refer us to a 24-hour tire shop, and called. I spent, no joke, an hour on the phone on hold while they dicked around with trying to see if I had coverage for a trailer tire. I could not make myself understood that I didn’t need a tow truck; I needed a phone number to a tire place. I know there are roadside services for the commercial truckers, so finally I got through to the operator’s head that that’s what I needed.

She gave me some phone numbers as my phone died and I started calling them. The one name I recognized, no answer. The next guys answered, but shot down my rush of optimism when he told me that, “Sorry honey, we only carry commercial truck sizes.” But he knew of a shop that might, so I called that one. Got his answering service who forwarded me through to him, waking him up. It was a large amount of money for him to come out and fix it on the road, but since we had the tire with us and were mobile, we suggested bringing it to him. That was slightly cheaper, and he agreed to meet us at his shop way on the opposite side of Bakersfield.

We flew back by Marvin, letting him know what was up, and found the shop, on the Taft Highway in a not-so-nice neighborhood. After sitting there for over half an hour, this adventure was getting really stale. I called him back and sure, enough, he’d fallen back asleep. Another fifteen minutes and finally our savior pulled into the lot beside us and opened the shop. What a nice guy he was too; I doubt that I’d have been so friendly at 2 AM.

We finally got back to Marv and the tire back on with a jack that was starting to bend from the weight, and were back on the road by 2:30. It’s a good thing Junior’s a night person; he’d at least had some sleep that day and it was his usual time to be awake. Me, I curled up against his coat and fell asleep in the back seat, mouth open and neck crinked. I got maybe an hour of fitful sleep, so I wasn’t quite up for 24 hours this time. We pulled in and dropped Marv and Connie off at 5:30, just a hair before my normal alarm time. I hadn’t meant to leave John home alone all night, but he was fine. I was housesitting by myself at that age, so there’s no reason he wouldn’t have been OK, but I was worried. It’s a good thing Seamus was at camp; I wouldn’t have been able to leave them both alone for that long.

Junior and I slept in, but I had a job to do at noon today. Junior’s off with Marvin hauling the truck back to the shop and I’m contemplating a nap. It’s not exactly how I wanted to spend my day off, but it’s going to have to do. These are some of the friends that I will drop everything to help, and who have done the same for me. I’m incredibly lucky to have found a husband who will also do that for my friends and not just his. But I’m not encouraging any more trips to Bakersfield in the near future.