Winter is back. I’m not happy about it. I used to love winter. Snow days, demolition derby sledding, snowball fights, snow angels, and no work, it was awesome. I remember playing outside until we were virtually frozen solid, then coming inside and mom using the broom to knock off the snow that was caked on David and me. Those were the days.
And then winter changed on me. It got cold for one thing. Really cold. Bitter, cuts through you like a knife, chills you to the bone, just want to hunker down under a pile of blankets and hibernate kind of cold. I don’t know about “Global Warming”, but climate change is real folks. How else can you explain the difference from the winters of my youth which were a veritable winter wonderland, to the frozen hellscape that Indiana turns into every year now? The difference has to be in the climate, because it’s certainly not in me. If anything, the changes that have taken place in me should have made me even more resistant to the cold. For one thing, I’m much, much better insulated than I was as a kid and yet the cold hits me instantly now, whereas when I was a scrawny little kid, I barely even noticed it.
There is no doubt in my mind. Winter sucks. Take last Monday for example. Sunday night, I stayed up too late reading, so Monday morning, my wife, the generous, kind, and loving Jess, let me sleep in. She had to take her new puppy “Dude” to the vet for some kind of vaccination, and the garage door opening and closing woke me up. I thought (briefly) about getting up, and then dozed off. A few minutes later, the phone rang. It was our preacher checking up on something I’d told him I would do. I told him I hadn’t gotten it done yet, hung up, thought again about getting up, and dozed back off. A few minutes later, the phone rang. It was our preacher, with another question. I answered it, hung up, thought about getting up, and started to doze off. A few minutes later, the phone rang. It was not our preacher, it was Jess. She was at the vet’s office, and her jeep wouldn’t start.
I told her I’d be there as soon as I could, got up, dressed, and went down to start the truck up so it could warm up while I finished my ablutions. I climbed in, turned the key to warm up the glow plugs (it’s a diesel), and then tried to start the truck. Unfortunately, instead of the roar of the diesel springing to life, I got the RRRrrrRRRrrr RRRrrrRRRrrr of the infamous dead battery. The batteries had been getting weak, and I’d forgotten to plug in the block heater. I was not happy.
No need to panic, I thought, Jess is someplace she can get out of the cold. I called my son-in-law and asked him to come jump-start the truck. He came back with his Blazer, and we hooked it up. We let it charge for a few minutes, and tried it. It cranked a little more, but still wouldn’t start. We continued to try for another hour or so before we gave up.
I took the Blazer to pick up Jess while he got my battery charger from his house and hooked it up to the truck. Naturally, the heater didn’t work worth a darn in the Blazer. I didn’t have time to mess with the Jeep because my daughter needed the Blazer to get to work, but I quickly checked it out, in case it just needed a jump. There was something seriously wrong. Nothing happened at all when I tried the key, and there was a weird electrical buzzing sound both inside the Jeep, and under the hood. This was going to take more than a quick jump-start (although I was beginning to believe that there was no such thing as a quick jump). So I got Jess and Dude picked up and brought home, checked that the battery charger was hooked up, and went inside to warm up.
After an hour or so, I went down to try the truck again. Still no good. I checked the battery charger, and the positive cable had come loose from the clamp. This did not make me happy. I took it inside, found my tools and fixed the charger, put it back on the truck and went back inside.
I gave it another hour and a half, went back down, and tried it again. This time it fired right up, so Jess and I climbed in and took off back to the vet’s. We had made sure that the Jeep wasn’t locked, but when we got there, the doors were all locked, and the unlock button wouldn’t work. The back hatch opened, so Jess climbed through and unlocked the door. I still couldn’t figure out what the problem was (although honestly, me trying to do anything mechanical is rather like watching a monkey play football. Sure it’s funny, but he’s not going to make the team), so we called the Jeep dealership, since it’s still under warranty.
Three phone calls, and an hour later, I was still no closer to success. Finally the Jeep dealership got an actual mechanic on the line. He listened to my description of the problem, and said, “Oh yeah, your battery’s dead. When the battery goes dead, it messes with the computer and all kinds of weird stuff happens. You just need to jump it.”
I was still not filled with confidence. Who would design a car so that, if the battery gets low, the whole thing just shuts down, except the locks, which just keep locking themselves, preventing you from getting to the hood release? Apparently every car manufacturer in the world these days. I got the jumper cables hooked up (after a few exciting moments having Jess try to move the truck close enough for the cables to reach without hitting the Jeep), and immediately, all the weirdness stopped. The doors stayed unlocked, the buzzing stopped, and it acted like a car with a bad battery.
Problem solved right? Wrong! I could not get it to take a charge. We sat there for almost an hour with the cables hooked up, and it still wouldn’t start. Now it was starting to get dark, so I decided to pull the battery, and go get a new one. We had to stop and fill the truck up first, of course, because it was low on fuel. I went in to the truck stop to get diesel fuel treatment and a Diet Coke, and had a weird conversation with a trucker who was filling a three-gallon mug full of soda. Only when he walked away, still talking, did I realize that he was talking to someone on his phone, using one of those Star Trek earpiece things. Ah, the wonders of technology. Just when I thought the day couldn’t get any weirder.
Anyway, now that he was out of the way, I filled a cup at the fountain machine, but when I pulled the cup away, the machine kept pouring, so my hand got covered with Diet Coke. I tried to reach underneath to pop the little lever to shut it off. That worked, but I triggered the Sprite lever, so my other hand got soaked with Sprite. By now, I was even less happy, but I was still maintaining my composure pretty well, still trying to see the humor in the situation.
At least the truck started, so off we went in search of a battery. We found an AutoZone that checked it out, and sure enough, it was shot. While we were there, I asked them to check out my truck batteries, and went out to disconnect them. Sure enough, both of them were shot too. At least I had my tools with me, so no problem, right? Wrong again, but thanks for playing! For one thing, my truck is a 4×4, 1-ton Dodge Ram, which means it is very, very tall. I am my father’s son, which means I am not. While I could reach the battery cables to disconnect them, there was no way I could reach the little blocks that hold the batteries in, much less get enough leverage to lift the batteries out. Another problem was that the ever-helpful and well-intentioned Jess had left the ratchet, socket, and extension in the Jeep, so it would be handy when we got back. OK, that’s inconvenient, but I could borrow tools, so still manageable.
Really, I think I handled myself pretty well. So far, I hadn’t gotten angry, or become too frustrated. I’d barely cursed at all. All in all, I had handled the whole situation with admirable dignity, decorum, and patience, right up until the third time I hit my head on the hood which was being held up by a piece of plastic pipe of insufficient length. The weather was well below freezing, and the hydraulic braces on the hood couldn’t hold it up, so I had stuck this pipe in to brace it. Unfortunately, that put the front edge of the hood right at forehead level, and just out of my line of sight, thanks to my baseball hat, which turned out to be great for impairing my vision, but much less effective at diminishing impact. It was at this point that my Zoloft gave up the fight, and I completely lost my mind (for reference, watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, the scene where Clark loses it over the exterior lighting).
Judging by the looks on their faces, the good folks at AutoZone found the sight of a short, fat, middle-aged man doing an impromptu Zulu war dance while rhythmically chanting an unbroken stream of profanity, obscenity, and vulgarity calling down the vengeance of the Gods on all designers, makers, and purveyors of automobiles and automobile parts in their parking lot to be deeply unsettling. On the other hand, after the dust had settled they seemed much more eager to assist in any way they could, loaning me a folding-chair to stand on so I could lift the batteries out, helping Jess to fish out the wrench she dropped between the radiator and the grill, and things like that. In between instances of assistance, they would retreat to the safety (and warmth) of the store to watch the show.
Eventually, I got both batteries in the truck replaced, and we headed back to finish rescuing the Jeep. That, thankfully, proved to be much simpler, thanks to the smaller battery size, lower vehicle, and Jess’s somewhat misplaced foresight in leaving all the necessary tools in the Jeep. I got the new battery installed, and the Jeep fired right up, and we finally headed for home and warmth. We realized that neither of us had eaten all day, so I stopped and picked up some carry-out on the way home.
We finally made it home, and were ready to call it a night, but wait, there’s more! Once we were full and warm, we got to talking about the little dog that had gotten dumped at the neighbor’s house about a week ago. The neighbors were feeding it, and it was staying on their porch, but the weather was supposed to get down to like 7 below, and 4-6 inches of snow. The more we sat there in our house, all full of food and warm, the more we both found ourselves worrying about that freakin’ dog. Which was how we found ourselves tramping through the wind and the snow at 10:30 at night to steal a dog that apparently nobody wanted. Jess was able to eventually get close enough to her to get a leash on her, and we got her back to our house, and bedded down in our basement with warm blankets, fresh water, and food. Jess checked her out and announced that she was about a year and a half old, just coming out of heat, and, in all likelihood pregnant, which is probably why she was dumped in the first place.
As we drifted off to sleep that night, tired and sore, but satisfied that we had done the right thing, I felt compelled to count my blessings. Sure, I might be a lousy mechanic, and we might have added a new dog, but I’ve got a warm house, I’m reasonably healthy, I’ve got family and friends that I can rely on, and Jess is not going to leave me to freeze to death in the middle of nowhere for something that might be an inconvenience (although I’m sure the thought has probably occurred to her from time to time). All in all, I’m a lucky and blessed guy.
I’m still not happy about winter though.
