My First Car, Part Two.

[photo2010]

Once, driving down a hill, I hit a patch of sand on a curve. Suddenly I was driving down the hill..backwards. I felt the car bump, then it felt like I was going up in the air. I came to a stop. I got out of the car and the right two wheels had climbed up a low stone wall in someone's front yard. The bizarre, and extremely lucky thing, was that the wall started at grass level, so my car literally 'climbed' up the wall. No external damage to the car, or me, and relatively minor damage to the transmission. I survived a potentially deadly accident, had there been an oncoming car, with me driving backwards. In fact, I survived a number of close calls.

One weekend I had a date with someone I hadn't seen in years. I drove into Brooklyn and we had a wonderful day in NYC. She was in fashion design, so we went to a museum fashion exhibit in the city. My car behaved, it was all good. Sunday night came, I dropped her off home, and started back home to CT. It was a beautiful night. Crossing the Bronx Whitestone Bridge, I was maybe 100 yards before the toll. I downshifted out of 4th gear..but the shifter got stuck in neutral! It wouldn't budge! I was stuck there as 100's of cars drove around me to go through the toll. A few minutes later, a tow truck came up to me, seemingly out of nowhere, and started pushing me up to the toll, I paid the toll, and was pushed through and over to the side of the road, then the tow truck left. I was alone, and it was somewhere around midnight. These were the days before cell phones. There was a pay phone there, and I had AAA, (American Automobile Association), coverage, so I called them, figuring they'd tow me home. When I told them where I was stuck, he said: "We don't cover bridges". I couldn't believe it. He said he would call a garage and have them come out. I was freaking out at this point. Stuck in the Bronx in the middle of the night. About an hour later, a tow truck shows up, but not to tow me..he says he can drive my car into the Bronx, (huh?), and I can pick it up the next day. So he does, shifting by grinding the shift through the gears, since the clutch didn't work. Each grinding shift making me flinch. He stops and parks it on some street near an all night diner. He called a cab for me and said I can wait inside the diner. Some interminable time passed and the cab showed up. I got in and told him where I lived, but that I didn't have the cash to pay him. I promised if he drove me to my parent's house they would pay him. We agreed on a price, but when we got there, (around 4am, my parent's not expecting me), he was not happy about taking a check..but he did. The next day I called my mechanic and told him what happened. "Sounds like it needs some clutch fluid". So I got a friend to drive me back to the Bronx. My car was still there and not stripped! I found the little container in the engine compartment that holds the hydraulic clutch fluid, poured a little in, and the clutch worked. I could have cried...

One final episode to come..

[ferdz ines]

man..cant wait what happened next..

[photo2010]

ferdz, it's a bittersweet ending..

[photo2010]

Suze, I couldn't believe it was still sitting there, much less intact.