09/04/2025
Editor's column
I’d been driving a crappy car for some years now. It largely kept me to Hayward and environs.
In simple terms — and I’m a simple man — the car could blow at any time.
My mechanics — I had several — told me my car was leaking. “From where?” I asked. “From everywhere,” they answered.
I don’t want to hear that from my mechanic or my doctor.
But several weeks ago, I was offered a paid trip to Idaho, flying out of Duluth, so I took the bait.
Twenty smiles south of Superior, my car began making a noise I think could be considered a death rattle. Metal on metal, louder and louder so I began making my way to the side of the road but before I could make it — BOOM.
My car threw a rod.
As my car smoked on the side of the road, I grabbed my travel bag and stood on the roadside. I haven’t been through this but who do I call? Do I give up on the trip? Do I walk to the closest bar? (Gronk’s was a good 20 miles away.)
As out of no where, a state patrol car pulled up, lights flashing. My knight in shining armor, although I’m hardly a damsel. He called a place in Superior to tow it and — given I had a timeline to keep — offered a free ride to the Perkins in Superior, as far north as he could go while not in pursuit.
He was the first during a trip of unrequited help.
I’ve wondered since what the folks at Perkins thought as I dragged my big butt out of his car.
“I wonder what this old, fat guy did,” was among my top thoughts.
Next, I hooked up with a caffeine-enhanced cab driver from Duluth who, while she drove across the B**g bridge with one hand and drinking a mega-coffee with the other at 80 miles an hour, told me how she loved to get f-ed up on Mexican beaches.
It’s hard to scare me but I stared at at the van floor for the trip.
She got me to the airport with six minutes to spare.
Never judge, I thought.
The flight took me from Duluth to the Minneapolis airport where I landed at A and had to make my way to G. In the alphabet, those letters are not far apart. In the Minneapolis airport, they are about a two-mile walk on granite flooring. My old knees caused me to miss my connecting flight to Spokane. Now I would fly out 10 hours later and spend the remaining time watching the mass humanity that is a modern airport.
‘Oh wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! Oh brave new world, That has such people in’t.’ I thought, trying to remember Miranda from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.”
That flight went well and my short visit in Couer d’Alene went well — until bedtime the next night.
At about 2 a.m., I was rousted my hotel security saying a gas leak had been detected.
Well, I had a big dinner, I wanted to say.
“Different kind of gas, “ the serious security person said.
“Well, sometimes mine’s pretty bad,” I said.
But he insisted I haul butt and get out of the hotel—NOW.
Most people in the hotel retreated to their cars in the parking lot. I had no such refuge. Just a cement bench outside the front of this high-end hotel. My RBF — what my daughter calls my “resting bitch face” — was full and complete.
The flights home were largely uneventful. I certainly nodded off a dozen times despite hating travel sleep.
Only to find myself back in Duluth, with a non-working car in Superior.
I finally tracked down my friend Joe who agreed to give me a ride home. We had a couple of drinks at Louies, where my friend Andrew offered his truck for temporary use.
Then my friends Pete and Tracy and Michelle put me in w a new car from Timber Ford. One of the best car-buy experiences I’ve ever had.
I generally am a solitary man, not lonely, but bad at asking for help.
This trip was filled with help, from strangers and friends and everyone in-between.
I’m eternally grateful. Thank you.
Rich Jackson is the regional editor for the Sawyer County Record and the Spooner Advocate. He can be reached at 715-718-6445 or at [email protected]
