Cousin Eddy Goes to Oklahoma City
We had to do some last minute packing
after we got Rocinante home, so we couldn't get on the road until about 3:00
Thursday morning. We packed our cats Simba, Sun Nee, and Freddy's new Selkirk Rex, Gidget, along
with their litter pan which would leave hard little grey nuggests of litter
all over the camper that somehow always found their way between my knee and
the floor, sending sharp pangs of pain into my leg whenever I kneeled.
That's not to mention how the nuggets would stick to the bottoms of my feet
and between my toes whenever I kicked off my shoes. If it wasn't for
the water dish I kept stepping in, my feet would have been covered with litter. (Nevertheless, it seemed litter always found its way under our sheets.)
To this menagerie, we added Pookah, Freddy's Chihuahua; and my Sheltie, Lady.
They both like to sleep on a fluffy plaid puppy pillow between the front
seats, where we were sure to step on them every time we tried to go back
to the kitchen.
We knew we would have to drive
straight through in order to make Oklahoma City in time to set up for the
Cat Show on Friday morning at 7:00. Yahoo said the trip should take
22 hours, but that did not take into account the fact that we were breaking
in a new engine, one without a speedometer, so I could only guess how fast
we were going.
At first, I thought I had transmission
trouble. The engine stayed in first for a long time, then when it dropped
into second, the car bucked, like it was being driven by a sixteen year old
kid who didn't know how to drive a standard transmission. At third,
the engine bucked again. I soon learned there was nothing to fear, that
as the engine broke in, the automatic transmission got smoother and smoother,
until it shifted perfectly normally.
Everything went well for about 200 miles.
Diane had taken over somewhere around Pensacola. We were starting to
worry about about the driving time, weren't sure if we could make it in time.
When Russ put the engine cover together
in the rain, he had messed up something in the radio, so I drove with earphones
connected to my mp3 player. When Diane started driving, I rigged up
speakers so she could hear it. Knowing she was a big Patricia Cornwell
fan, I put on BLACK NOTICE for her and promptly fell asleep. Those
Cornwell books are sort of chick books, but I do enjoy them now and then.
This was not one of those times, and I dozed off.
I awoke to the sound of a strange hum
coming from somewhere in the engine. We stopped almost immediately.
"Check the oil," Diane said.
We have the worst dipstick I've ever seen.
It's about four feet long and twists all over the place, so that it's almost
impossible to put back. Frankly, every time I try to put that dipstick
into the engine, I suffer horrible deja vu remembering when I was in the
hospital for three weeks being treated for a ruptured appendix and now and
then, the nurse had to change the plastic tube in my nose. Everybody's
nose has something inside it shaped like a peatrap under the kitchen sink,
and she shoved that tube around the corner like we run a wire snake into
a toilet--shoving in and out, again and again until it gets around the bend.
Being catharized was a pleasure compared to those nosejobs.
When I finally got the dipstick back in
and out again, I freaked. There was almost no oil in there at all!
I remembered a story from Mike, the welder, who said his father had lost
the warrantee on his brand new engine because he had failed to put oil in
it. I called Russ and left a message on his answering machine.
Then I called my closest friend, Gary. Gary is great in an emergency.
He always knows the right thing to do, and if he doesn't know what to do,
he's always so sure of himself, that it sounds right, anyway. It's
always a comfort to get his advice.
We agreed that the best thing for us to
do is get some oil in there right away. I put in two quarts. Then
Russ called. I told him I could find no leaks anywhere. He said
it was perfectly normal to use a lot of oil as the engine is breaking in.
The hum didn't really sound bad, so we continued on. Russ said it might
be something in one of the peripheral devices and I should continue on.
And on we went, past Gulfport, past Biloxi.
As the engine seemed to be purring rather than whining, and we were falling
behind schedule, we picked up the pace a little bit, now and then actually
passing a slow moving vehicle. In Louisiana, we headed north on I-55
to Jackson, where we had another problem.
"The map says we stay right on I-55 until
we get to Memphis, so there should be no problem," I said to Diane.
"No," she insisted. "Yahoo says we
have to take the I-20/I-55 North/Us-49 exit towards Vicksburg/Yazoo City,
exit 92B, then merge on I-20 East/I-55 North. It must bypass the city
traffic."
"All right. There's the exit.
Tell me what to do next."
Fifteen minutes later, we were hopelessly
lost in Yazoo City, Mississippi. We were falling behind schedule again.
I decided to take a chance and stay on I-20. A few minutes later, we
crossed the mighty Mississippi River and headed into Vicksburg, Louisiana,
where we picked up a smaller road, route 65, towards Little Rock, Arkansas,
where all the local tabloids were running front page feature stories about
Jack Kennedy's affair with a White House intern.
Actually, I felt pretty good. It's
nice to get off the interstates once in awhile. When the driving is
not so monotonous, I don't get so tired. And there were things to see.
We passed several really nice likeside resorts. We saw a wonderful
town, too. It was called Transylvania, Louisiana. They had a
huge bat painted on the side of their water tower and apparently made a good
tourist income selling tee shirts. It was unnerving, though, to pass
Transylvania Elementary School. Another thing--having taken the Vampire
Tour last year in New Orleans, I found myself wondering if Transylvania wasn't
perhaps a town for retired Vampires--Lestat's summer home could be right
there on Lake Providence.
A little further up the road we saw a
sign that said, "The Honey Wagon--Cesspool Service." You just don't
see things like that on the interstate.
We drove on, as evening came. I
began to get tired. The interstates are more tedious, but at night,
a simple two-lane highway is dangerous. I found myself dosing, then
frantically snapping awake, as cars zoomed by in the other direction.
The back of my neck ached. For a time, I propped myself up with a pillow.
Feeling myself getting sleepy again, I took the pillow away--ZAM! Suddenly
my head became a ball of yarn, frenziedly attacked by a little black cat,
digging its frightened claws into my forehead, sending blood all over my
face.
I cursed, desperately trying to hold onto
the steering wheel with both hands--trying to avoid a head-on collision.
Gidget finally jumped off, leaving me with a three inch tear in my forehead,
from which blood ran down the side of my face. Diane handed me a tissue
to wipe off some of the blood as we moved onto I-40, just south of Little
Rock. "There's a bypass," she said, "But I think at this time of night,
we can probably just stay on the interstate."
As the pain subsided into a dull throb,
we realized as we passed Little Rock, that we were pulling ahead of schedule.
There was a good chance that we would get to Oklahoma City and have three
or four hours of sleep before the show started. We were going to make
it.
At 2:00 am, we pulled into an all night
Texaco in Clarksville, Arkansas, about an hour from the Oklahoma border.
I checked the oil. It was full. As I performed the tedious task
of trying to force the dipstick down its serpentine path, I thought we should
just play it safe and check the tires. I got out the gage. The
left side was fine. When I got to the right inside tire, I got no reading
at all. That was crazy. How could we have no air at all?
I soon learned the answer. A week
ago, I had purchased an expensive set of tire valve extenders for the inside
tires. This had worked itelf loose and broken, emptying the tire.
What could I do? I couldn't put air in the tire because the seal had
broken. I even tried raising the camper on a beam, then putting a rope
around the tire and using a hammer to twist it tight, like a tourniquet.
It still didn't work, but as I reached around behind it I realized that the
tire had cracked and would serve no more.
Our last chance was the spare. I
had looked at it--the treads were thick--it was almost brand new. I
proceeded to take all my packages off the back of the camper, knowing it
would take me an hour to put them all back. We got the spare off.
It was good, all right. Wait a minute. What was that chalk mark
on the side of the tire? A large chunk had been cut from the side.
The tire held air, but it was completely worthless. That bastard
who had sold me the camper had screwed me again!
We simply could not make it now.
An all night tire guy got us ready for an 8:00 tire delivery, but Oklahoma
was out of the question. In a way, I knew we were lucky--if that other
tire had given out on the highway, it would have done major damage to the
camper, but to have gotten so close and lost--well, it was just completely
frustrating. All we wanted to do was buy a couple of six packs in the
Texaco Mart and get drunk.
But we were in a dry county--they didn't
sell any alcoholic beverages.
We slept the sleep of the tired and
the defeated. In the morning, they put four new tires on the camper.
We arrived at the cat show about 3:00 on Saturday. The people there
were very nice. They allowed us to stay and set up Saturday afternoon.
It was business as usual on Sunday, then we spent the night at Wal-mart, where
Diane panicked when a truckload of derelicts parked right next to us.
Everything was okay, though. The refrigerator door fell off again and
I had to fix it with fiberglass and a coat hanger.
Oh yes, the shower leaked. The drainpipe had
burst. I had to squeeze two hands into a one-hand hole under the shower,
wedge the broken pipe trap against the floor with an old shoe, then tape
up the pipe with stretchy black sticky tape--an almost impossible task considering
the size of the hole. was like the guy who had the nut in his
fist inside the tree trunk and couldn't let go. Finally, I had to epoxy
the drain, which also leaked on the sides.
Right now, I'm at Council Bluffs RV park,
writing this. Diane is doing laundry; Freddy is playing with his bow
and arrows. Lady is up on my bed. She doesn't sleep with us at
night anymore, because the bed is full of cats all night. You haven't
lived until a cat walks on your face in the middle of the night, then jumps
on your lower stomach, swollen with the morning need to urinate.
We had to spend a day here because it's
a holiday. We can't get the oil changed until Tuesday. Then, it's
off to Denver, where we expect to make lots of money in a big cat show.
How much did we make in Oklahoma City?
$87.00. That's net.
CHAPTER FIVE