Good Samaritans, Cell Phones, and a blown tire

A few years ago, on a spontaneous trip to Williams Sonoma to purchase special cutters for a recipe I wanted to try, the tire blew out on my minivan on the highway. I had my four year old son and infant daughter asleep in the backseat, no cell phone, and no real expectation of fixing the thing alone. I didn’t have flares, reflectors, or any idea of how the hell I was going to get out of this one.

Before I go further, and in the interest of fairness, I should state that my husband and I built our marriage on a sort of bad Carma/Karma. Not to be punny, we just had a lot of automotive bad luck. In one case our only car, a midsize Mazda sedan, caught fire on Route 128. The electrical system caught fire and melted a crater the size of a basketball in the dashboard. My husband, again without a cell phone, called the fire department on the phone of a fellow commuter that kindly stopped (probably had some laughs over it too, and who can blame him?). Because the interior of the car was on fire the engines drive by a couple of times before stopping, and then didn’t believe that the car was actually on fire (the heavy layer of soot on the windows looked a lot like tinted glass) until one fire fighter opened the door to a thick waft of acrid smoke.

Another car, a hand-me-down through 4 generations, was so old that we had to repair it just to get it to pass inspection. Brake lights refused to stay fixed, the air conditioning gave up the ghost, the radio was kaput, the gas gauge stubbornly stuck at empty despite a filled tank, and a few rusted holes in the bodywork big enough for a raccoon to crawl through.

Once, the heating system in our minivan let go on a trip home from Maine in February. That was special, because in order to run heat in the back seats the system required running the fan in the front as well. So while my husband and I froze to our seats, our kids slept soundly in back for the remaining three hours. I couldn’t feel my feet for three days.

So, there I was, a silly twit without phone or clue, stuck in the breakdown lane of 128 with my wounded van, woefully distant from my destination. I didn’t know whether to wake the kids and go far away from the side of the road and risk being covered (literally) in ticks (which, I’m sorry to say has happened before) or keep them strapped in the van, a veritable target for bad drivers. I stayed put and waited for someone driving by to call the police and report that some idiot woman in her gold mom-mobile had a smoking tire and was stuck in transportation limbo. While waiting, quite a few cars and a couple of semi’s drifted into the break-down lane, as if my mini-van had a sort of gravitational pull on the cars driving by.

Eventually a state trooper on his way home stopped and saved my bacon. He called me a tow, positioned his car to protect mine, and informed me that the thing to do in such an incident is get away from the car because too many people stopped in breakdown lanes have been killed by morons that crash into them.

Once my vehicle was hauled onto the flatbed of the tow I was stymied as to how to best strap my children into the petite cab of the truck. I needed three seatbelts, and one was already being used by the driver.

Suddenly, out of the midst of the clamor and confusion, an angel in blue jeans arrived on the scene, complete with non-wounded minivan and a few car seats of her own. Apparently she drove by, saw my disabled car and me holding the infant carrier with my 10 week old baby inside. Knowing that any mother would be worried about how to safely manage the tow, she kindly stopped to offer us a ride to anywhere we needed to go.

Though she’s from Wilmington, she happened to be in Burlington that late afternoon with enough free time to ferry a stranger and her children to a car repair shop. Sent by God, right place at the right time, call it what you want. Regrettably, I don’t remember her name, but I do remember her car seats and how my little baby looked so small in one, her Kate Spade handbag that I admired, and her curly brunette hair. At one point I was reduced to gushing my thanks but she put me at ease, saying she was doing her good deed and that she was “only getting into heaven on the family plan.”

Her act of kindness has etched a place within my cynical soul and I know with certainty that there are genuinely good people, caring people in our midst.

I don’t know how to thank her, so I hope this column is enough until I meet her again. If you know her or think you might, send her my email address, I’d love to give her proper thanks.

And yes, I did get a cell phone. But just this week, I washed it.