Hello! Is this unfamiliar territory? Do you have any idea
what you’re actually doing on this webpage? Never fear, there is goodness
ahead. However, I’d suggest you check out the previous installments of our love
story, lest you find yourself lost and confused (sort of like we were in this
story).
Here is part five of how we became us.
For as long as I can remember (read: since I was 16), if ever I had something to work through in my mind, I drove. It didn’t matter where to, what mattered was the feeling of accomplishment that I felt, pushing past the road, heading onward, onward. As long as I was behind the wheel, I could ruminate, process, muddle through whatever was vexing me at the time.
One night, near the end of May, Drew and I took a long drive together. We drove and drove, headed north. I clearly remember trying to listen to a Daft Punk song, and Drew getting annoyed with it. This has absolutely no bearing on the story, but evidently I’m scarred from the occasion. But I digress.
We arrived at an old junkyard in the backwoods of Vermont. This isn’t like the previously mentioned backwoods of Greenfield, where it was welcoming and sunny. These were the deep woods of Vermont, late at night in the drizzling rain. Seems promising, right?
We pulled off the road, got out our portable light kit, and set to making photo magic. We even turned on the Subaru’s headlights to add some dimension to our artistry. Oh yes, we’re that legit.
What’s that, you say? It’s a bad idea to keep your headlights on and engine off for an extended period, especially when your car battery is already weak? Yes, we thought so too, particularly after we got back into the car and attempted to start it.
No need to panic. Getting stranded in a junkyard in the middle of dark, rainy, cold, backwoods Vermont without a working vehicle happens to everyone, right?
Drew and I had experienced this before (the dead battery part, not the backwoods part). In fact, his car was always dying on us. It died in fast food parking lots, on top of mountains, in the middle of Wyoming…
Hold on, we’re not there yet.
Being the super-dude that he is, Drew had a jump starter in his back seat. So, we hooked ‘er up and crawled back into the car, waiting for the battery to charge enough to start.
We waited, and waited. Tried the engine.
Nothing.
Waited, tried again.
A feeble turnover, then nothing.
Sooner or later, we gave up and called 411. Now that I think back, I’m wondering how we ever found cell phone service out there, but I'm here to tell the tale, so it must have happened.
Tow truck man to the rescue! He rumbled up, jump started Drew’s car, and we headed back to his auto shop to pay him.
The moral of this seemingly pointless story? Apparently we shouldn’t have been “down in those parts,” according to our tow truck man, “There are some pretty dangerous hobos down there.”
Dangerous Vermontian hobos? Huh. Good to know.
[...]
Stay tuned for our first showdown! You’ll never believe what we fought over.