Vignette

Agnes is quirky. Agnes is not reliable. Agnes is my VW new beetle. Why I own her is a long story, but indeed she is mine. Since purchasing Agnes almost two years ago, Agnes has been on many tow trucks and she and Bill, her mechanic, have a very special and expensive relationship.

On Monday as I drove home from radiation the battery light came on, joining the omni-present check engine light. Since I was only 1.5 miles from home, I pushed on. As I turned onto McGrath Highway, the ABS light came on and only moments later, the airbag lights started to blink. Next the radio faded. As I pulled in front of the Lechmere train station, the brake light began flashing and then the oil light came on. At this point, I pulled into a private parking lot at the Glassfactory Condos and pulled into a reserved spot.

I checked the oil levels and to my horror, the dipstick appeared to be dry. Now Agnes loves to drink oil, so there was a half bottle of oil in the car which I added. Not enough oil however to make a dent to her thirst. So I headed out to walk to find oil on this stretch of highway. A half mile later, there was a Shell station, I purchased oil and walked back. After adding oil, the car was still not interested in starting up. When I tried to turn over the engine, I heard a loud purring/clicking sound and all of the lights once again blinked in fast succession.

Mondays, Leslie is in New Hampshire so I called him on the cell phone. I was distraut. "Car broken, AAA, sniffle." But there really was no way for him to help me, but we decided that the car should go visit Uncle Bill. As I hung up the phone a large white Volvo station wagon pulled up and the blonde woman started to yell at me. "This is my parking space. You need to move."

"My car won't start. Triple A will be here soon to tow it," I responded.

"Well, can't you push it out of the way?" she enquired.

And much to my embarrassment, I had a total meltdown in front of this woman. She gave me her phone number so that I could call when the car was out of her spot.

And so I called Triple A who assured me that a tow truck would be there within an hour, and 59 minutes later the most ancient tow truck in the city arrived. Mr. Tow Truck pushed my car out of the space so that he could hook me up, but this really wasn't the right type of truck for my car. After hooking me up, he agreed and released my car. The oil pan was sitting on his bar and one bump would have damaged the car. [Boston has lots of bumps.]

And so I was back on the phone with Triple A. And here it gets weird. Triple A claimed that there was only one flat bed truck in the area and it was on a long run to Providence. Well, I know for a fact that there are at least 15 flat bed tow trucks in Somerville alone. Over the rest of the afternoon, I had to make 6 more calls to Triple A. By the time a flat bed truck came to get me 6 hours later, Uncle Bill was no longer open so the car had to be towed to my house. And then we repeated this dance in the morning to get the car to the mechanic.

Monday night when Leslie arrived home, of course, we chatted about this nightmare of a day.

"You know Susan, when you called this morning and were so upset.... well, I was so relieved that it was just the car," he said. "It is just a car."