Wisecracking Across America - 50. Chapter 50

Thursday, July 1, 1999

Dinner last night was a Whataburger. Dessert was supposed to be a chocolate chip cookie the dog instead filched off my nightstand while I was in the john. Chocolate can kill a dog, but this morning this one was frisky.

We grabbed a free, if bland, breakfast at the motel, not caring 'cause we were heading Back to the Beach. We stayed till noon and might just have moved in, taking time to get proper permits. But the Fourth of July was coming, and we'd made reservations near Carlsbad Caverns---we weren't gonna be holiday-stranded. And while those plans could easily have been changed, there were no rooms available at the beach. Besides, the sins of the truck had come back to haunt me.

"It's slow, turning over," Tom pointed out.

"I listened. It was. "Probably the heat," I suggested, knowing nothing about trucks.

"We should check," he decided wisely.

We were inches from Corpus Christi, so finding a mechanic in a city that large shouldn't have been hard. But the day before a three-day weekend?

We stopped at a half-dozen places and called maybe five more. All were reliable, name brand dealers. "There's a three-hour wait," we were told. Or "Well, it could be the battery. Maybe the alternator. Probably the generator."

"How old's the battery?" I asked Tom. He keeps all his paperwork.

"Six years."

"When the last time you had the alternator replaced? The generator? Water pump?"

These were just words to me, parts I'd bought for various cars over the years without ever really learning what they did. But Tom's answers were all good, though he knew even less about motors than I did. Which meant we were facing a hot afternoon's wait, to see a professional.

"This is dumb," I finally insisted. "We're in a city before a weekend when everyone's trying to get out. I'm almost positive it's the battery. That means as long as the engine's running, we're okay. Let's drive to a smaller town and have a less-busy mechanic check things out."

Tom just looked at me, I'm sure thinking, This is the guy who killed my battery---who throws away warranties when they expire.

Still, he bought it: I showed him on the map how we'd always be near a town. And how we'd stay on the Interstate, where we could be readily towed. And how we weren't going that far, twenty or thirty miles, to Sinton or Mathis.

We skipped Sinton, Mathis being closer. We stopped at a chain auto parts store and asked for the name of a good mechanic. The guy behind the counter was busy, both with incoming customers and several on the phone. The older woman beside him was just the cashier.

"I'll be with you in a minute," he promised. "Honest."

It took somewhat longer, but Tom kept the engine idling. "We should get gas," he said at one point, though we both knew not to do that with the motor on. Sparks. Fire. Special Effects.

The guy behind the counter finally came outside. "Whew!" he sighed. "You wouldn't believe how busy we are! I had to put my mother in charge."

Gotta trust a guy whose mom works the cash register.

He quickly looked at the battery, listened to Tom's story, then my possibly-crackpot theory.

"You're probably right," he told me. "I doubt it's anything serious." He was surprisingly well-spoken for a mechanic. "Texas heat kills batteries in two-or-three years. Faster, when you run the air-conditioner."

He sold us a battery, but couldn't put it in. "I'm overloaded," he didn't need to explain---at least five more people had come in while he helped us.

"You always this busy?" I asked.

He grinned. "It's the holiday."

It seems we weren't that far out of town.

I would've popped in the battery myself---I'd done that before. But I couldn't risk Anything Messing Up. For one thing, Tom would be pissed. For another, we still had a week's drive to go, mainly crossing desert.

"I know a great mechanic," the guy assured us. "I'd trust him with anything."

He gave us directions which, eventually, we followed. First, we had to discover that there were two water towers in town, and we were measuring from the old one. We went back and asked the guy to draw a map.

Fortunately, he thought it was funny. As fortunately, I'd tipped him well.

Within minutes, the trustworthy mechanic was hooking up our battery. As he worked, he mentioned there'd been an E-Coli scare off Mustang Beach the night before. "It's all over the TV."

Tom and I hadn't seen anything, on the news or in the papers. The mechanic kept saying, "It was near the Holiday Inn. You know, the beach right in town?" Luckily, we been at a Best Western, at the far edge of town. But I got our map to check the currents.

"The way the water was moving last night," I told Tom, "everything was swept away from us."

He didn't agree. "Maybe that's why the dog wouldn't go in. Maybe she knew something."

Timmy was down the well? Oh, sure. I'm not the only one with crackpot theories.

We soon left Mathis for San Antonio---to see the Alamo. Which we didn't, though we waved from an overpass. Very small, the Alamo. Especially when tightly surrounded by office buildings. We also hit holiday traffic.

Another hour put us in quieter Fredericksburg, massively dog friendly maybe 'cause it's a tourist town. That might have been reason to stay away, but there was nothing ahead of us but sagebrush. Besides, there were so many possible motels, and we'd arrived so early, we drove around a while before settling on a place than gave us our own cottage.

There was also a pool. Not Mustang Beach, though chlorinated.

And we fell into a terrific restaurant. Looking for the place recommended by our desk clerk, we asked a guy on the street for directions. He helped, but also asked what kind of food we liked.

"Good," I laughed. "Our only requirement."

It turned out he just happened to co-own a restaurant. Which just happened to be right behind us. The other owner was a respected Cajun chef who'd tired of New Orleans.

The food was amazing---as good as our dinner in San Francisco, our previous high. And the service was wonderful. But that could have been 'cause Willie Nelson was in town for his annual Fourth of July bash. And Tom was mistaken for one of his musicians.

267 miles