Diesel Pump #9

It started as a normal day; a plan, a goal, an expected result. What ensued could be considered a minor fiasco not to mention the most absurd day in both Travis’s and my life. That is not hyperbole; on the scale of absurdity, taking every day of our lives into account, this one ranked at the top. Not among the top, near the top, or in the running, but right at the pinnacle.

The day was Friday March 9th, 2007 and the task was a one-day road trip to pick up a 1985 Jeep CJ-7 my good friend Travis had purchased from a fellow in Little Rock, AR. Travis obtained our company Dodge Ram Diesel truck and flatbed trailer that our store uses for delivering cars to different parts of the state and country from Doug, the Pre-Owned manager, and dropped it off at his house the previous day so we would be ready to go early Friday morning. The plan was to leave Dallas at 7 am, make the 4 1/2 hour trip to Little Rock, pick up the Jeep on the back of the trailer, and turn around to head home, getting back before 8 pm so Travis could make it to his friend Blake’s birthday party. I was just along for the ride; it was my day off and I am always up for a road trip. I am currently reconsidering my zeal.

I arrived at Travis’s house 10 minutes before 7 as I was told the door would be unlocked and that if I was not there at 7 sharp, the train would be leaving without me so to speak, neither of which were accurate. After sitting in my car for half an hour and calling Travis for the 11th time without an answer, I walked into the back yard to lie on the hammock. After getting situated and comfortable for about 15 seconds, all the rotten ropes on the hammock snapped all at once, and I landed with a solid thud after the 3-foot fall to the ground. I should have gone home and gone back to bed right then, but that was just the beginning. Finally I decided to wake the roommates and ring the doorbell. I went upstairs to find Travis still fast asleep after a late night out after our company awards dinner and tried to roust him to no avail. Again at 8 am we tried to get motivated to leave, but decided another hour of sleep sounded more appealing. We eventually got on the road around 9:30 a.m. As we traveled out the 635 to hit the 30 East all the way to Little Rock, Travis missed the exit while sending a text message. We eventually turned back around and were actually en route to our destination 15 minutes later.

As we traveled along it was getting close to time to refuel, Travis said to me for roughly the 4th time to make sure he put diesel fuel in the truck. Eventually we stopped at an Exxon off the freeway to refuel, and Travis double and triple-checked with the cashier to find out which pump was diesel. He filled the tank and received a receipt that denoted his transaction as one for diesel fuel. With our full tank, we were ready to make the rest of the trip. But then something went terribly wrong.

Not even two minutes down the road, Travis noticed the truck running in an inappropriate fashion. He began to get nervous and called several people to determine if there was some sort of “bad diesel” fuel you could put in a diesel truck. After several reliable sources verified that this was not at all likelihood, we began to feel better about the situation. Then the truck died. Driving up Highway 30 at 70 mph, the truck completely died while Travis was downshifting. We coasted off the road into a very inopportune position, right where the freeway went from 2 down to 1 lane. Travis was fervently calling our porter, Nelson, who primarily drives the truck, to see what was going wrong. Nelson advised him to let it sit a few minutes and start it again. Starting it was never a problem, but keeping it running definitely was. Coming off the grass shoulder, we had a difficult time merging back into the single lane of 60 mph traffic, but eventually got on with a little help from a road worker slowing the oncoming traffic. Somehow we managed to get another 15 miles to Texarkana before the truck completely stopped running. Again we were stuck in an awkward position on the road, and Travis made brilliant efforts to restart the truck over and over again while rarely impeding traffic or endangering us severely. Eventually, after a couple of stops, we made it to the parking lot of an Exxon station. After consulting Doug, we got a hold of a local Dodge/Chrysler/Jeep/Ford/Mitsubishi dealership in Texarkana and they sent us Bubba’s Big Green Tower; and why wouldn’t it have been. We got the truck up on the tow truck roll-back, but not before detaching the trailer and then physically lifting this 1,500 lb. monster and rolling it 20 feet to the corner of the parking lot so it would not be easily accessible for someone to take. Beyond that, I had to stay behind with the trailer to make sure it was not absconded with while Travis rode with Bubba over to the dealership to assess the damage. So what else could I do but buy a Morning News and walk next door to the Denny’s to have a sandwich and do Sudoku. Not to insinuate that Denny’s is the pillar of class dining to begin with, but this Denny’s was particularly broken down, with plenty of hilarious colloquial jawing between the waitresses on staff and an eclectic mix of irate customers who were upset they got passed over in the To-Go line and yokel regulars stopping in for an early lunch or a late breakfast.
An hour later Travis called me absolutely livid. There was unleaded gasoline in our diesel gas tank. But how could this be? He had pulled up next to the diesel pump, checked where it said diesel fuel, asked me four times to remind him to put in diesel, asked the cashier at the Exxon station if the pump was diesel, and received a receipt that read Diesel Pump #9, $82.37. How could there be unleaded gasoline in our fuel tank? Well believe it; sure enough it was unleaded gasoline.
The next goal was to find a way to pick the trailer and me up from the Denny’s and get us back over to the dealership to wait to hear the news on whether the damage was repairable. Travis found an old army vet salesman who literally just tossed him the keys to a 160,000 mile Ford F-150 that was front-line ready. He came to get me and we had to lift the huge trailer and roll into position again, just the two of us this time, and back the truck up to hook it up. Once it was all positioned, we realized the ball on the truck was a 1/2 inch too small for the neck on the trailer, so Travis had to jimmy-rig some chains to attach up to the frame of the truck and then drive the truck about 15 MPH across Texarkana back to the dealership to ensure the trailer would not hit a bump and going flying freely down the street. He managed to get it back to the dealership safely and once there he got on the phone with our general manager to explain the situation as it stood.

At the moment Travis was explaining to our GM the best-case scenario, the service writer walked up looking grim and shaking his head. He informed us that the transfer pump was shot and they would not be able to obtain one until the following Monday.

3 hours in Texarkana: worthless. Diesel truck full of unleaded gasoline: worthless. Jeep located in Little Rock while we’re stranded in Texarkana with a diesel truck full of unleaded gas: worthless. This story: priceless.
And it gets better.

Now we have to come up with an alternative means by which to get home. Travis makes a call to the man selling him his Jeep, who after working out some logistics says he can bring the Jeep to us in Texarkana; a very courteous gesture, but now we’re talking about pulling a 1,500 lbs trailer with a 22 year old Jeep that hasn’t gone over 40 mph in over 10 years 3 hours in the pitch black of Highway 30 back to Dallas. That plan seemed insufficient.

We looked into renting a truck we could pull the trailer and Jeep with, but that was out. Next we walked over to a nearby U-Haul. The only drivable U-Haul they had was a 30-foot moving truck with a 2-inch ball on the back and a hole in which we believed we could place our 2 1/2-inch trailer ball through. Besides the fact that this was an absurdly large truck to have to drive, the entire situation was just getting more and more out of hand. Travis went through with the transaction, but then realized our ball would not fit, so had to get a refund.

Exhausted and accepting that our only option was to wait for the man to arrive with the Jeep and drive it back pulling the trailer, we asked the service writer if he minded that we drank some Texas Tall-Boys we had earlier purchased at the Exxon on the premises to which he casually shrugged off as a non-issue. So there Travis and I sat, drinking 24-ounce domestics in the back-lot of a local auto mall waiting on his 22 year old Jeep to arrive from Little Rock. Not a soul bothered us or batted and eye at us drinking on their public property premises. It was like being in another world altogether.

Just as dusk arrived, so did the gentleman with the Jeep. He showed Travis around it and we took it for a test drive around the block. It ran as ragged as a car could to start, lest we forget that the battery was dead from having the emergency flashers on the entire way it was pulled down. We were not thrilled with the prospect of the trek home in this beast.
Also, the Jeep was completely out of gas, so we needed to drive it up to the station down the street to fill it up before the last attendant left the dealership and locked our trailer behind the back fence. As we were in the turn lane to go into the gas station parking lot, the Jeep ran out of gas. Since it was an uphill steep and I was wearing flip-flops, there was no chance I was pushing it anywhere. Travis left the Jeep square in the road and briskly walked over to the station, bought a gas can, filled it with gas, walked back, poured it in, and got the Jeep started again. After filling it with gas, we realized there was a small leak in the line that connected the pump receiver to the gas tank, so he lost a 1/4 tank right off the top.

We got back to the dealership to find the gate shut. But eureka, it was not locked! As I got it opened and we pulled in, we got word from Doug not to pull the trailer because there was no way to hook up the lights. This did come as somewhat of a relief, but we had jumped through hoops to make sure we were getting this thing back. At any rate, we left it there and got on the road…almost.

We had to stop at the Target and get a phone charger, as all 3 of our cell phones had no battery life left after a day of talking on them non-stop. Two great moments took place inside this Target:

First, as we were walking through, quiet and exhausted, I was processing through the day’s information, and I realized I had not seen even a average looking person, much less a lady, all day it Arkansas. I commented to Travis, “You know, I bet it’s hard to find an attractive, well-put-together lady in Texarkana,” and no sooner had the words come out of my mouth than did an absolutely, phenomenally beautiful blonde woman walk out of the aisle in front of us. We looked at each other in amazement, and broke into furious laughter. It was as if we were just being mocked all day long, and this was such a non-subtle finish. And that wasn’t even the best part.

As we are checking out with our phone charger and a roll of duct-tape Travis had decided he could use to fix the gas leak, the cashier rung us up and handed Travis the receipt. Travis pulled a huge jumble of receipts from his pocket and in the most defeated sort of manner, was trying to organize them on the table at the end of the register. Several awkward seconds went by as we both just stood there after she had rung us up, Travis desperately trying to compile his wad of receipts. As he made one last effort to stack them neatly, the cashier said,

“Are you having some trouble?”

Travis and I paused, looked at her in a sort of awe, then at each other, and just shook our heads in disbelief. I turned back to her and said,

“Ma’am, I wish I could explain to you how much trouble we’re having.”

And again, we broke into an insuppressible fit of laughter. The cashier was confused, and we apologized for possibly making her feel like she had said something wrong, and headed out to the Jeep.
We sat down and I looked at the old dusty cigarette lighter and said,
“Do you want to bet that this thing does not work?”
“No…I don’t want to bet on anything right now…”
He plugged it in and…a big bag of nothing. We both scoffed.
But something made me reach up under the dash just to see if there was a disconnected wire of some sort and behold! There was an unattached plug from the lighter to the electronic board in the dash, and the phone charger lit up.
FINALLY, something had gone our way.

We sat quietly and rode home barely speaking: partly from exhaustion, partly in reflection. God willing, we made it all the way back to Dallas intact and lived to tell the story.

It was the most absurd day Travis and I had ever experienced, full of mishaps and the results of Murphy’s Law. But perhaps it was a beacon to point us to appreciate a little more how wonderful things are when they are truly in rhythm. Either way it was a day I will not soon forget and one I will laugh about for a long time.