The Kind-Hearted Tow Truck Driver

I’m half blind because there is sunscreen in my eye: the vacationer’s dilemma. I haven’t been on a vacation in a year, since the last time we made the drive from the Far South into the Deep South—two distinctively different cultures, despite the word “south” in both. We enjoy the culture clash as we visit my eighty-eight year old grandma.

It has been a year since we drove along the same highways, looking at the white puffy clouds and the soft blue sky contrasting starkly with the humanness of all those other travelers. If I had that fictional case of amnesia, I would know that I grew up in a combination of city and country. When I look out at overpasses on the interstate at the mixture of traffic and trees, I feel at home.

Last year I had a bit more of a taste of traffic and trees than I signed up for. The whole incident has a mysterious cloud over it, like part of a story—like something that was meant to be. Maybe somethings are meant to be, as I certainly have no explanation for them.

My husband, the kids, and I were traveling through Georgia on our way home. We both were in an unusually chatty mood, having a lovely conversation that lasted for a couple hours. Both of us are normally very oriented toward the vehicle’s functionality. We are both the sort of people to look at the gauges frequently, and that screen on modern cars in the middle of the dash makes it even easier to do so. Oddly, neither of us did. We were in a trance. Also oddly, neither of us heard the ding of the low gas light turning on. Neither of us saw the “miles to empty” estimation plastered on the little screen on the dash - until I happened to look down and saw it said “zero miles”. Even stranger, the exit we intended to stop at for lunch, full of gas stations, was one mile away.

“Shit,” was all I had time to get out before the engine died. We coasted to the side of the interstate as I immediately had flashbacks to my personal injury paralegal days. I saw what happens to cars that are parked on the shoulder of the interstate. A semi-truck going eighty miles per hour does horrific damage. My husband was calling road-side assistance while I was anxiously picking at my fingernails, waiting for the opportunity to get us out of that vehicle and out of the reach of traffic.

Despite the bad things that seemed to come together that resulted in us running out of gas, there were some unusual positive ones. Next to the shoulder of the interstate was a ditch, above it was a barbed wire fence. There was a break in that fence right where we had coasted off—the only break visible into the distance. It was August and the sun was blasting down on us, a ninety-five degree Georgia afternoon. There were no large trees along the ditch, where we could stay easily within site of the van, except for the one large pine tree that was right next to us. It provided just enough shade to keep us from the worst of the weather. I grabbed our bag of snacks and the two canisters of water I had and I hurried my babies up the ditch to our pine tree picnic to await the tow truck.

The Deep South takes a lot of stereotype bullying. The north likes to imply that the south is stupid. Indirectly, they make fun of their fervor for morality. In the south there seems to be a lot more “back woods” kinds of folks, which are easy targets to city dwellers. The ways of life are so different. If I had to breakdown on the side of the interstate in either the north or the south, I’d pick the south. I am innately suspicious of people. I assume there is somewhere between a 10 to 50 percent chance every stranger that approaches me is a serial killer. I am probably a product of my society, but skepticism is in my nature too. That said, I lower those odds in the Deep South. Some of those famous manners of southern hospitality do linger.

So, we were waiting for our savior - the tow truck driver with the gas can. My husband was growing frustrated with him, because despite us knowing exactly where we were, something had gotten lost in translation between the insurance company and the tow truck company. He called us when he was twenty miles north from us, wondering where we were. Meanwhile, we sat under our pine tree that was next to a dirt road. The road connected to a small trailer park. In the hour we sat there, four different people stopped and asked if we needed help. One man offered to take us back to his house, or to sit in his air conditioned vehicle. There was absolutely no chance I was going to do that with my children, but for the record, I only estimated an eight percent chance he was a serial killer. Another man stopped by and gave us six cold water bottles—the good old Deep South.

Then, the tow truck driver showed up. A very large, burly man sauntered out of his truck. He probably weighed the equivalent of four of me. He had a scruffy, long beard that may have had food in it. His accent was thick and heavy sounding. He looked like a stereotype a northern could do a lot of work with, and he also may have been a bit irked by the wild goose chase he had been sent on. Meanwhile, I had been nervously considering exactly how fast I could get the children in the van and buckled into their car seats, should something ominous happen at that moment. I was trying to keep things out of fate’s hands to the best of my ability. I think I had them in and buckled in less than a minute—truly a record.

I sat down in the front passenger seat to strap myself in when someone leaned into the driver’s seat to try the engine. I thought it was my husband, so I turned to look at him without censoring any of the honesty on my face. I must have looked very stressed—physically and emotionally. Instead of my husband, it was the tow truck driver. He looked my face over intently for an instant, and then said in that thick, deep, far from friendly accent: “It’s okay Ma’am. We’re goin to get you home.”

And I completely believed him. Everything was okay. Thank God for tow truck drivers.