We were pulling out of the Lowe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s parking lot Wednesday, with two grandchildren, Arthur and Carly, in the back seat, when my wife reminded me to wait until they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d shut their doors before I drove off.<\/p>\n
Point well taken. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve always been impatient once I get behind the wheel and people are still loading. Once, my wife says, when our own kids were the age our grandkids are today, I reacted to a slammed door and drove about a mile from where Bonnie had been loading watermelons and cantaloupes. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t snap until Adam, our elder child, asked why I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d left Mom behind.<\/p>\n
Over the years that story has been retold, with many details adjusted for inflation. So instead of having traveled a mile from the fruit stand without her, I supposedly forced her to walk five. Instead of a 14-pound watermelon, it grew to 328 pounds; instead of a comfortable 72 degrees outside, it became Phoenix-like; instead of a 10-minute delay, it grew to 40 days and 40 nights; and instead of comfortable walking shoes, Bonnie was wearing stilettos.<\/p>\n
Except for the poetic license and the slight embellishment of the details, I plead guilty. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m trying to learn that if a door closes in a car and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m behind the wheel, the sound doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t necessarily mean all the passengers have entered and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re ready to roll.<\/p>\n
My mom accused me of the same thing when my sister Dorothy and I took over the driving for her. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d each been driving for almost 50 years when we became her chauffeurs. Despite what I thought was good driving, Mom found it necessary to remind me, after she turned 90: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And make sure the car is completely stopped before you open the door to let me out.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Where did I get this behind-the-wheel impetuosity? Simple: it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a throwback from the olden days when nothing moved and most vehicles were unreliable. We had an annual tradition in which we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d dedicate the weekend after the Fourth of July to a several-family picnic in Tres Ritos.<\/p>\n
That area, between Mora and Pe\u00c3\u00b1asco, remained our destination for several years. When we got there, the trip became worth it, but many a temper flared as we hit \u00e2\u20ac\u201d year after year \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a delightful spot on Holman Hill named Here Your Radiator Overheats.<\/p>\n
It never failed. My dad and his friend Alfonso, the driver, usually pulled over in anticipation of a blown radiator hose or, if we were lucky, a percolating radiator cap. Years later, as I made a dozen mid-summer trips between Phoenix and Flagstaff, I noted the 4,000-thousand-foot climb and counted the number of drivers nursing their overheated cars. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s understandable, given Phoenix\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s temperatures, but Tres Ritos, at a cool 70 degrees?<\/p>\n
But let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s get back to the behind-the-wheel impatience. In the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc40s and early \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc50s, we would join Alfonso and Leah and their son Billy, along with a family of their acquaintance and one of ours, for the pilgrimage to the northern strands. The adults thought it best to travel in one freshly gassed-up vehicle, a large dump-truck-like creation. It was made for hauling huge loads, and it had sides two or three feet high, to keep cargo from spilling out.<\/p>\n
We were the cargo. While Mom, Dad, Alfonso and Leah rode in the cab, some 15 of us stood up in the back of the truck. I still wonder how our host got away with using a company truck for private enjoyment. The truck was bright yellow and carried bold black letters with the words \u00e2\u20ac\u0153State Highway Department.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Alfonso, as an engineer with the SHD, managed to borrow such a truck each year.<\/p>\n
Though he probably didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to fork over cash for the use of the truck, there was a payment nevertheless. The sweat and tears and swears more than made up for the cost of a few gallons of gas. For example, the first time we arranged for the picnic, we all met at a parking lot where SHD trucks were stored, on Lincoln Avenue, just east of Grand.<\/p>\n
We kids piled into the back of the truck and listened as the engine purred. For about 10 seconds. What followed was a pop heard and felt by many, probably indicating the truck had backfired. It simply refused to start. Dad suggested pouring gas into the carburetor \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to prime the engine.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Another loud eyebrow-singeing pop but no forward motion. Alfonso, convinced the sparkplug wires were crossed, uncrossed them, causing a sonic boom. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Do you think we need a new fan belt?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Should we replace the plugs?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We probably need more turn-signal fluid.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d All these possibilities were pondered.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the matriarchs fretted over whether the potato salad might get warm and the homemade chile cold. We children helped ourselves to bottled pop, which we opened by popping the bottle cap against a metal bumper. It worked. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s called pop.<\/p>\n
We learned a lot that day. We received an education on vehicular nomenclature: fan belts, radiators, generators, points, plugs, condensers, batteries, pistons, and a host of words \u00e2\u20ac\u201d uttered under their breath \u00e2\u20ac\u201d that kind of sounded like batteries and pistons. It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t until later trips that we discovered that each named truck component didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have \u00e2\u20ac\u0153damn\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or some other group of letters as its prefix.<\/p>\n
Plan B was simply to borrow another truck, this one a bit smaller, but not in such desperate need of maintenance. The two-hour delay shortened our opportunity to wade in the three cool rivers, but the trip, after all, was worth it.<\/p>\n
As Alfonso cranked up the second truck, standing in back, I tried to help it along, mentally pushing, purring, doing whatever was necessary to ensure this truck didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stall. My attitude \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and that of all the others \u00e2\u20ac\u201d seemed to be that once the truck\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s running, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not stop for anything. That experience, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m fully convinced, has made me the way I am now: impatient, always wanting to get on the road and never being fully convinced the old heap will start again once I turn it off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We were pulling out of the Lowe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s parking lot Wednesday, with two grandchildren, Arthur and Carly, in the back seat, when my wife reminded me to wait until they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d shut their doors before I drove off. Point well taken. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve always been impatient once I get behind the wheel and people are still loading. Once, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}