I pulled into the transmission place. A young man with gentle eyes and a baseball cap covering a curly mullet was behind the counter: I liked him immediately. I told him the honest story: I was coming down from the Catskills in New York; had lost the clutch on the truck; it had 265,000 miles on it; I figured though that with working four-wheel drive the truck was still worth almost $2000; I was trying to get down to the Gulf, and I needed some help, first deciding if a repair was worth it, and then doing what would be expensive work – taking out the whole transmission to fix the clutch – well. I had tried to make it to the Smokies this morning and couldn’t get into first gear.
“Oh that’s beautiful up there. Smokies? Man.”
Just like that I felt I had a way in with this guy – or perhaps he did with me. “I tell you, you’ve got something special here in this part of the world. I’ve been to the Smokies once – and I tell you, I saw more flowers there in one day than I see through the whole year in the Catskills.”
“Oh, the Catskills? I hear that’s real nice.”
“Oh, it’s beautiful, no doubt – I love it – but just the dogwoods and redbuds alone here are amazing. And man, it’s cold up there now.”
“You know one place I go with my girlfriend, you might have some time, is Red River Gorge. It’s just beautiful in there.”
I will note that two other people recommended “the Gorge” to me while in Lexington, and pictures of it confirmed an interesting thought I had while driving in Kentucky, that much of the landscape looked like the American West – but just covered with vegetation. The underlying rock is similar, which is not true along the East Coast.
We followed this conversation with observations about Ford Rangers: how good they were, the problems they have, how many miles I had, how many miles he had on one. It all ended well: he promised to have “his guy” look at the truck, make a determination as to whether or not it was worth putting money into, and he’d call.
I walked out and for the first time got my bike gear together. I put the seat and front wheel on (I had taken it apart for transport), re-attached the brakes, put a pannier on the back and filled it with the necessary gear. They took the truck and I put my bike wheels to the road for the first time on this trip.
I went to a bike shop, where I picked up several tools I wanted to have with me: a pedal wrench, a hex wrench, extra tubes, a pump, etc. I had these tools in a bag somewhere in my life, but I hadn’t been able to find them. Maybe they perished in the divorce. I left off buying replacements because I thought I’d find them at my mom’s house when I passed through New York City, but they never turned up.
So now one more thing was done. I doubled back to the transmission place. I knew I was being an annoying New Yorker – I knew they said they’d call – but I wanted to make it clear that I was stranded and I needed that truck.
The man I had spoken with was not there. There were other men passing in and out, but they all wore the nervous silence of men who won’t and can’t speak for the business, because they had things to do and they knew they had better leave the talking to the boss.
“Hi I left a ’95 Ford Ranger here about an hour ago, I wanted to see if anyone had a chance to look at it.”
“Eez thet Jawun?” said a voice from the little office next door. “Jawun from NEWyork?”
I poked my head in. “Yes.”
“Hi,” he said, though it sounded like “ha.” “Ah’m Troy. Thet’s mah name but it ain’t what they call me. They call me El Patron. You know what thet means?”
“The godfather?” My Italian always gets in the way of my Spanish.
“The bawuss.”
He got up and hobbled over to the counter, where he took a seat. He was probably around fifty, with gray thinning hair and glasses, and despite a noticeable gimp, he seemed quite fit.
“Besides having truck trouble,” I said, “I’ve thrown my back out.” – More on this particular disaster later. – ” So it’s been quite a start to the trip. Looks like you’ve got some back trouble yourself.”
“Oh, it ain’t mah back,” he said. He lifted the leg of his trousers: he had a prosthetic leg. “Ah’m lucky to be here, ah’ll tell you what. Had a motorsickle that busted me up pretty good.” He took a seat and rearranged the one paper on the desk. “So Jowun we got your truck we’re gettin’ a look at it. It won’t be lawung. Ah em running hawurd.”
He was seated behind the counter now, and the description “running hard” did not seem immediately apposite. But he had a nice smile and I liked him.
“So yer coming down from NEWyork? What do you do theah?”
“I’m a maple syrup farmer.”
He stopped so dramatically that all his men noticed and stopped too. “Buhwoy,” he said, “Ah mate a lot of people in mah lahf, undertakers and cops and pretty much everybody, but ah nayver mate a maple seerup farmer before. How the hail do you farm maple seerup?”
And I went into a description of the process – tapping the trees, setting up lines, boiling it all down, how you can drink the sap but it’s virtually water. “Nayver. I nayver met anyone who did that,” he kept saying.
“I don’t think you have the maples for it around here,” I said.
“Well we got some water maples that you can’t keep out of your yard as weeds,” one other worker noted.
“But I don’t think you’ll be getting any sugar out of them,” I said.
“Thet’s fowur shuwir,” they all agreed.
“Way-il Jawun the maple seerup farmer, Ah think we’ll have that truck looked at real soon and we’ll get you back on the road. Won’t we Danny? Yays Ah think we weell.”
I felt pretty good about the situation. And so I headed off to take a look around Lexington and get some lunch. I still had a few hours before Catherine would be done with work. I had just gotten downtown when I got a call. “Jawun? Yays we got a look at the truck. We thank it’s fahn it jes needs a new clutch. So way’ll jes go right ahayd.”
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