Peter Barnum
Toastmasters CC#2: A little drink

I’ve lived most of my life in cities, but I’ve always loved small, 
country towns.  This worked out well for me, as I grew up in Illinois.  
You know the Midwest:  You're in a big city, and 30 minutes later, you're 
surrounded by corn.  I really think the attraction is genetic, because 
although I may be a city slicker, my family is a bunch of yokels from way 
back.  My grandpa grew up on a farm in the plains of Nebraska.  You ever 
see those run down wooden shacks, like in movies?  You know, like with a 
guy out front playing a banjo?  Those were the rich folks down the road.  
His house was made of dirt they dug up from the prairie.  (I kid you not, 
I have a picture.)  When they went to school, they didn't even have their 
own horses.  All the kids piled onto one horse and rode that way.  It 
sounds like a hard life, but as I discovered, living that way teaches a 
person to be ingenious with whatever they have around.

One time a few friends and I took a road trip out into a small country 
town.  Well, that wasn’t exactly the plan, but that’s how it happened.  
It was a good trip, we were out of the city within a few minutes, and 
didn’t even have car trouble for an hour.  We had been zipping along on 
the highway, but when we slowed down, the cabin started to smell like 
rotten eggs.  About this time, smoke started coming from the front.  We 
popped the hood and looked at a battery sputtering acid all over the 
engine compartment.  Thankfully, we had passed a small shop a mile back, 
nestled between two barns.  We pulled up and took a look inside.  It 
looked fine at first.  There were all sorts of power tools and wrenches 
and cans of Valvoline.  They even had some of those elevators that lift 
up cars.  Except there was a cow on one of them.

After a short wait, someone came out to look at the car.  He looked like 
an old grizzled veteran of a thousand pickup truck repairs.  He really 
put on a show, trying the steering, taking of caps, and tapping things 
with wrenches.  (By the way, this is an age-old practice of mechanics and 
doctors.  I don’t if it’s tradition, or if it’s just to rationalize the 
bill.)  You might mistakenly think that small town mechanics aren’t as 
cunning as the guys at Jiffy Lube, but this guy was a pro.  He must have 
spent about ten minutes playing with every single piece of the engine.  
He even got a buddy to come over and frown at something with him.
	
Finally, he got to the smoking battery.  He opened up the top and took a 
quick whiff, thought for a minute, then disappeared into the back.  A 
minute later, he came back with a machine.  All the tapping about was 
great, but I felt reassured now that a piece of technology was in the 
picture, even if it looked fifty years old.  Actually, it looked so rusty 
and dented, that I wondered if it still worked.  This thing had about 
twenty dials and a bunch of wires with clamps. He hooked up a couple of 
these to the battery, to the engine, to everything really.  One on the 
tire, one on the tail of the cow, and the dials started showing all these 
numbers.  I don't know what it all meant, he could have been checking the 
engine or contacting the mother-ship.  His friend came over again and 
they chatted a bit about the alternator.  I could see it on the itemized 
bill “chatting about random part – fifty dollars.”  
	
After a bit more playing around, he turned to us, pointed at one of the 
dials and said, “See this?  It’s giving out 12, and it should be about 
4.”  He paused for a minute, took another sniff at the battery and told 
us, “Ah, she’s just thirsty,” and left again.  My friends and I had a 
laugh at this.  Of course, it’s not the alternator or the coolant, she 
just needs a drink.  We stopped laughing when he came back with a squeeze 
bottle of water.  And actually started squirting it into the battery.  He 
went and refilled the bottle a few times, until he had emptied about half 
a gallon into there, at which point he turned it on the ignition, and 
revved the engine. It worked perfectly.  The battery had dried out, and 
indeed, that’s all she needed.  And in the end, the bill was only for $30.  
	
Just like my grandpa’s family in years past, the mechanic not only made 
do, but made good.  And I’ll tell you, the next time I break down in the 
middle of nowhere, I’m going to make sure to do it by a little country 
mechanic.