I’d picked up the girls yesterday, from my mother-in-law’s house, and we were so very close to home. I started smelling diesel, and wondered if it was the truck in front of us.

Seamus pointed at the steering wheel and said there was smoke coming out. Sure enough, there was, sort of.  Thick, oily black smoke was coming up from under the steering column. The last time there was smoke in the truck like that, the trailer brake controller was on fire, so that’s where my mind went, but we weren’t using the trailer brake.

I pulled off the side of the road in a hurry, thumping my wheels so bad that I thought I also blew a tire. I wrestled that beastie a little further down the road, as I’d pulled off next to a straawberry field and didn’t think it’d be a good idea to set the dry grass around it on fire. Just past the field was a flatter spot, so I threw it in park and cut the engine and made all of the kids get out of the truck and go stand way out of the way.

It’s a diesel truck and diesel isn’t particularly flammable but still, I dove into the toolbox for the fire extinguisher, just in case. At the same time, I was on my phone calling a local buddy, as I knew Junior was at work and half an hour away at best. While I was doing those two things, the guy who lives in the house I’d stopped near came out to check on us. We could see fuel pumping out under the truck, and when we popped the hood, it was sort of everywhere in there. Clearly I’d broken a pressure fuel line.

He offered us something to drink and tools if we needed them, said it looked like I had things well in hand. Probably he couldn’t see my hands shaking, but I was starting to calm down by then.

Marv swooped in and took us all home; fortunately John was there to babysit the youngers while Marv and I went back for the truck. We hooked up the tow strap to his truck, but unfortunately, when my winch was installed they took out the front hooks. We hooked the strap to the winch carrier and crawled on down the road.  Turning and stopping that beastie without power steering or brakes is no joke, and when Marv made a wrong turn that involved about three times the number of corners, I just groaned.

When he stopped before we were there, I wondered why. Turns out he’d caught a glimpse of my winch in his mirror during one of the turns, and we’d bent the shit out of the piece we attached to. As Murphy would have it, I used to have an extra one of those pieces, but threw it away when we moved, thinking I’d never need it. So we repositioned the tow strap and got the truck on home, where I unloaded the rest of our junk and left it parked on the street. It’s not getting up the driveway without a few strong backs or possibly a tow truck.

It can all be fixed, but I hate to see it like that. I have another truck, but I hate to drive the work beastie around town when I don’t have to. That’s a good way to get my tools stolen out of the back, and if I want to put any more than two people in it, I’m going to have to clean the inside tools out of the back seat. At least Junior says he can fix it, although there may be a lot of cussing coming from the shop. Just what we needed, another money and time suck. It is what it is, and what it is is broken.