The Never Ending Night

This story is dedicated to our dear friend and best man at our wedding, Terry Adams (December 18, 1948 - March 10, 2019), because it was his favorite one of all my calamities. Bev, our hearts are especially with you at this time of year.

This is a long read. Hopefully you find it worth your while.

(For all the younger set out there, the events of this story were in the days before cell phones came out of the womb right after you, so they weren't a thought, much less any sort of an option)

There's a run of bad luck, and then there's runs, plural, of bad luck. I seem to be adept at it. Totally unwillingly so, but adept nonetheless. And hapless to boot. If a wrong place and a wrong time were to intersect, zero in on the crosshairs of it, and there you'll likely see me, warily staring and waving back at you like Wile E. Coyote just before he gets run down by a truck.

Way back in my early days of being a very active tractor jockey, happily barreling around the countryside with my pipeline yellow 1986 Chev half ton work truck, and 1993 Nichols tandem trailer, I indeed and inevitably got myself into a few jams. None was worse or more memorable than The Night of the Blown Alternator, or The Never Ending Night. I could call it something else more fitting and descriptive, but it would completely give away where all this is going, so you'll have to read on to find out for yourself. There is a faction out there I know I may regret revealing this to, but que sera sera...

Oh yeah: if you haven't already, grab some popcorn and get comfortable, because this may take a while... And be happy you weren't me.

Being a tractor jockey was a great way to make a living. I ran all over Ontario, and, to a much lesser extent, western Quebec. I didn't make great money at it because I wasn't mean enough to chisel people to the last penny buying from them, or holding out for top dollar selling. I made enough to get by, and there are perks other than money if you open your eyes and mind to them.

I will say I hated running in Quebec. That was because the QPP (Quebec Provincial Police) drooled out of the corner of their scheming crooked corrupt mouths at the mere thought of an Anglophone English speaking lad falling into their dirty laps with the juiciest fruit of all: a truck and a trailer for commercial purposes. You were toast if they caught you. Toast. So I did my darnest to stay the heck out of there. It took one heck of a tender morsel of a tractor to entice me to go over there. And as soon as I got that sucker loaded, I got the heck out of Dodge, let me tell you. I would breathe a giant sigh of relief when I got back into Ontario. NOTHING could tempt me to take my truck and a trailer over there these days. Forget it.

The best part of hoggin' & floggin' tractors was all the people I got to meet. Every run was a Mini Adventure. Someone always had a story to tell, and it was always interesting. I got to eat at different restaurants all the time, and saw all the scenery my Scottish blue eyes could take in. Dad often went with me and we'd have a whale of a time. I used to look in the mirror and happily say to him, "There's nothing better than seeing a tractor following you home at seventy miles an hour!" He thought so, too.

And then there were the bad days.

Yeah, they came and they went. Some were worse than others. Usually it was just a delay due to a blown tire, which I was well equipped for. Breakdowns did happen. And the very, very rare time-wasting jerk reared his ugly head. Miscommunication was kept to a minimum due to my adamant demands on the phone of a completely clear and concise and dead honest description of the tractor the customer was calling to sell me, "... or the only thing you'll see of me will be my tail lights..." That worked well. I bought scores of them, and certainly less than a handful were out and out dishonest.

One fateful Saturday, I got a call from a fella down in Cornwall Ontario. He had a McCormick W4 on steel wheels. Normally I wouldn't have crossed the road for a W4, but one on steel? I was all ears.

My young wife Denise went with me on that run. The '4 wasn't running, but I was fully equipped for dead hosses with a really good winch on my trailer, and two batteries mounted near it for short-coupled power. Those two batteries were also connected to the truck's own battery with welding cable running through the truck's frame. Under the rear bumper of the truck I had mounted a tractor hydraulic breakaway remote bracket, and used it to clamp colour coded welding cable connectors in them for fast hookup or disconnect when hitching or unhitching the trailer. It was slicker than guts on a door knob. Just hitch the trailer, plug in the trailer harness and the two welding cables, and go. The truck kept the winch batteries charged as we were driving, and recharged them after a good tug on the way home. The truck always had three batteries to start on and the winch always ran on three. It was a great setup, and the guy that bought that trailer from me still uses that very setup to this day.

I never needed three batteries more than bringing that W4 home. Different tractors I should have stayed away from, but none more than that McCormick W4. I would have rather run with the bulls in Barcelona than repeated the night that... well, you'll see.

We paid the guy, dragged the tractor out with the winch to the road, loaded it, chained it down, and started off for home, heading into the now-setting sun. That was when I noticed the ammeter showing a discharge. I always drove with the lights on at all times of the day to be seen. Now, I turned them off. It was after 7 PM, on a Saturday, so there was no dropping in at a NAPA or CarQuest Auto and buying a total run of the mill GM alternator. And we were three hours from home. Well, we could work around that, except for... The Paper Route.

The large rural paper route I ran 7 days a week in the wee hours of the morning for the Ottawa Citizen absolutely commanded and at times commandeered my life. Everything worked around the paper route. Sleep, farming, flogging tractors, and fun; they all subjected themselves to the over-burdening paper route. I never had the confidence in myself to ditch the only steady pay cheque I had, which came from that miserable doggone motor route as it was also called.

So there we were, three hours from home, on a Saturday night, with the sun going down, in a truck and trailer that lit up like a sleazy Route 66 motel, with a crapped out alternator. When I say 'lit up', you're probably wondering why, because I said I was driving a half ton. Well, it was a heavy half, and I had the leaf springs re-arched and extra leaves installed for more capacity when I needed it. I pulled a fast one one time, and hauled a tractor home in the box. To make that trip and hopefully keep the MTO (Ministry of Transport Ontario) from wising up to my shenanigans, I installed 5 cab marker lights and four lights across the tailgate to make it look like a one ton from any distance. With the extra springs it had the rake and the lighting of a one ton on a half ton budget. The trailer had a full compliment of clearance lights including three extras on the very back to help protect me when I was loading on the road or if I had to change a tire. The only way anyone was going to hit us from not seeing us was if Stevie Wonder himself was driving alone. So now I had nearly a tractor trailer's worth of lights running off of a truck with no alternator. And I had to get home for the paper route first, FIRST thing in the morning.

I took stock of the situation: 1 truck, 1 trailer, 1 tractor, 3 batteries, 3 hours home, a craploada lights if we had to turn them on. If I drove with the lights off, and Denise and I both kept our eyes peeled like fighter pilots for other traffic, we could turn on the clearance lights--and headlights if necessary--until they passed us or we passed them. And hope like heck there were no cops seeing us turn them on out of nowhere. The truck was just old enough to have a mechanical fuel pump, so there was no electric draw for that. Just spark for the ignition. Oh, and the cabin fan on its default, low speed ventilation setting because there was no actual Off selection. Don't brake any more than you have to, either, because of the brake lights and electric trailer brakes. This still should be doable.

We didn't count on how many doggone people decided to be out in the middle of frickin' nowhere on a cold, Autumn Saturday night. We kept having to turn the lights on. I even unplugged the trailer harness to conserve power. The truck had good brakes and tires, 6 or 7 hundred pounds of gear in it like chains, binders, two spare tires for the trailer, a portable air tank, and impact wrench, and a full compliment of tools. Our chosen route was flat, with only steel wheels the W4 was light, we weren't going fast, we were both all eyes, and we were always on pavement or I never would have tried that. The W4 was just narrow enough that the tail lights on the truck could be seen past it. The extra large, triangular lights I installed on the backs of the trailer's fenders after the factory ones kept blowing bulbs had big reflectors built into them. There was reflective tape on the rear as well, so the trailer was still visible even without the lights on. Stay off the highways and main roads, go as much as the crow flies as possible, and keep the lights off. Not ideal, but I had to get home.

These days, in the advancement of aged, curmudgeonly crankiness, I wouldn't have a job that could put me in such a predicament. Or I sure wouldn't have it for long, one way or another. But that was then and this is now.

Too much time has gone by, so I forget what it was that made me decide it was better to run off of one battery than all three, but I unhooked the welding cables connecting the trailer's batteries to the truck's battery. The plan was to deplete one battery at a time and switch them out. I always had more tools and gear with me than you could shake a stick at, so a battery change was nothing. But I didn't have a spare blinkety-blank alternator, or I would have pulled into the first commercial lot and changed it right there and been done with it.

It was surprisingly little time until the first battery barfed. It certainly wasn't an hour. The sober thought that we didn't have ANY batteries that were fully charged crept into my senses and wouldn't leave. That W4 had been a long piece from the trailer, and was sitting well sunk in soft ground in its shed. Its wheels didn't even turn at first so we dragged it skidding, and then let it roll back, freeing the brakes. So it was a really tough start, and a long haul out to where we could load it on the trailer. And the truck and trailer's lights were on the entire time, sitting and loading on the side of the road. And all that meant seriously discharged batteries. I realized the alternator must have died as we neared the place where we bought the tractor, and I never noticed. I was usually very diligent to the point of being almost paranoid about constantly scanning gauges, but I wasn't this time, so didn't notice a major problem in its developing stages. Those batteries had a good drain on them and didn't get one precious ounce of juice put back in. So the long and the short of it was we really didn't have three batteries. We had about two worth from the start, if that.

I pulled over and changed the truck's battery out for the first one on the trailer. Two more batteries to be eaten up in two more hours when it was getting darker and darker. I thought if we could hit a gas station that sold batteries, one fully charged one would do the trick to get us home. Three like this certainly weren't going to cut it. A new alternator at this time of night just wasn't going to happen no matter what.

We kept going until the truck started to splutter on the second one. The traffic was maddening. It seemed to me that we were the only ones out there with a legitimate reason for being out there, so what the heck were all these other tomfool yahoos doing running to and fro like It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and making us turn our lights on for no good reason?

I was so glad to finally hit Upper Dwyer Hill Road. It was a straight shot of extremely low traffic all the way to Arnprior, putting us only 40 minutes from home. The last battery change had tensely come and gone, and I was grimly reminded we hadn't seen a single worthwhile gas station the entire way we came. We weren't going to make it and that was all there was to it. I decided it was time to lose any pride I had left and stoop to desperate measures. Any GM car or truck along the way would have a suitable side post battery. I liked batteries with top and side posts for boosting on the truck and for ganging the batteries on the trailer, but the truck really only needed a side post battery. I figured a square body GM truck would be the easiest to pull a battery out of, so I had Denise watch her side for one. And, NO, I wasn't going to steal one. I was going to BUY one. Anybody's vehicle was apt to have a fully charged battery, and I was confident one actually good battery would get us home. Monday I could grab a new alternator and install it and the whole nerve wracking thing would be behind us. The truck starting to splutter again, telling us we had historically only ten minutes driving left, Denise spotted a nice, dark blue square body Chevy truck parked in a short driveway. I stopped, and left the truck idling in case I struck out, because it definitely wouldn't start again at this stage. There were lights on in the house, and my knock was answered fairly quickly. I explained our situation to the guy at the door, and told him because I was in a big jam and desperate, I'd pay him cash on the spot 50 percent more than the cost of a new battery with taxes AND give him a perfectly good battery that he just had to recharge. I would install it and everything, and all he had to do was hook his battery charger to it or boost it with his car and go for a drive and it would be charged. He'd have 150% of the cost of a new battery and not have to buy one. No way to lose. If someone showed up at my door with an offer like that I'd tell him I'd install the frickin' battery myself, and thanks fer doin' bizniss. This filthy rotten heartless jerk turned me down. I offered him another 50 bucks on top of THAT and that miserable doofus still turned me down flat. "Nope".

If you ever watched Corner Gas, and see the reaction of the cast when someone mentions Dog River's nemesis, Wullerton, that's how I feel about that aloof goof.

"I have my wife in the truck".

"No, I'm not going to go for that. There's a gas station about 10 minutes back and across the highway on 49 and they sell batteries there".

The price of TWO frickin' brand new batteries CASH, PLUS one of my perfectly good old ones in exchange and he STILL left us to the dogs. I'd love to find that Wullerton dope broke down on the highway himself some day...

I was extremely skeptical about a gas station being open out there in the boondocks at twenty to 10 Saturday night and told him so. I said, "If they're not open we just went ten minutes in the wrong direction we can't get back from". He was having none of it and basically said, 'good luck', closed the door, and I found myself walking back out to the truck, dumbfounded. I would have NEVER left someone in that state. Denise was astounded he turned such a sweet deal down and casually left two people stranded on the road in plain view without a second thought. She would have thrown a rock through his window if I would have let her. He had no idea who he was messing with.

Anyway...

I turned the truck and trailer around and very apprehensively headed back. We got to the turn at 49 as the truck was really dying this time, much worse than I let it before. We pulled into the gas station and rolled to a stop. Oh, did I say, "darkened gas station"? Because that's what I meant. The sign on the door said they closed at 9:00 PM Sunday nights. At least we were off of the road, but we WERE now backtracked ten minutes that we could not possibly recover. I got out and walked over behind a tin shed to take a badly needed pee because it was chilly and we couldn't have the heater fan on any higher due to electrical draw.

Denise's anxious voice came to me from the truck. "Dan? I smell something burning!" I ran back to the truck, and saw an orange glow reflecting on the ground underneath it. I looked in between the box the cab and was horrified to see the paint was charring on the front of the box and the back of the cab, about to burst into flame any moment. The entire exhaust system was glowing orange and almost translucent.

"The catalytic converter is full of un-burnt gas from the ignition getting weak, and now it's all on fire in there! There's no way to stop it!" It was then that I quickly scanned the area around us... and my gaze was drawn up the ominous cylinder of the gas station's giant propane tank towering over us not more than six feet away from our smoking truck. That truck had two fuel tanks and I usually kept them full. The one was full. The other was about a quarter or so full. We weren't parked at the gas pumps but we were parked at something infinitely worse. My mind conjured up a picture of that thing BLEVE-ing (Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion: look it up on Youtube; it's pretty spectacular) and blasting off to who-knows-where, while incinerating us and obliterating everything around us on the ground. And that Wullerton rat put us in this exact spot.

I normally think pretty fast on my feet, but there was nothing I could do here. No fire extinguisher (oh how I cussed myself out for that), no water hose that I could find. No puddle and no pail if there was one. No windshield washer fluid in the tanks at the gas pumps. Nobody around that could help. Nothing. Just a remote, empty, darkened gas station with two people at it about to be blown to Kingdom Come because that Wullerton swine wouldn't take my 250 bucks and a perfectly good battery and see us on our merry way.

The decision was made to wait it out and see if the gas in the exhaust would burn itself out before lighting the truck on fire. It was probably the tensest 10-15 minutes of my life, but the paint didn't catch, and the bright orange of the exhaust gradually darkened until it wasn't visible any longer. We were left alone in the dark, actually thankful all was dark.

The options now were to give in and camp out in the truck, or to just stubbornly keep trying. There was no doing anything for ourselves; we were going to need help. I remembered a fella I had met a few times about stuff to do with old tractors. He lived near Arnprior. Not far away. Tractor guys help tractor guys. I set out walking to the nearest house, intent on calling him and having him come help us out of this mess. It was cold, and the wind was blowing stronger than I expected. I was young and fit, so I figured I could keep warm running. The first house was around a corner at the first intersection, sort of behind the gas station. I got there and knocked on the door. Nobody came. I knocked again. Nobody. I knocked a third time, and a lady's tremulous voice came to me from above: "Hello?" I looked up and there she was with her head half out a second story window.

"Hi. I'm sorry to bother you, but my wife and I are broke down at the gas station. Could I use your phone to call someone for help?" Well, of course, the answer came back as a 'No'. She wasn't letting me in. Fine, I guess I get that, but I'm standing here shivering in the cold, and I'm looking up at her with the countenance the lady at Renfrew Canadian Tire always called 'The guy with the honest face'. But this isn't Renfrew, and these people sure ain't from Renfrew. Or Cobden or Foresters Falls for that matter. No, you can frickin' walk or freeze to death here. Or both.

"Could you call him for me? His name is Orville ***. You can find him in the Arnprior phone book. Just tell him Danny Bowes is broken down at your gas station here. He'll come to help us". She reluctantly agreed to that and her face and tussled mop of hair disappeared from the window. About five teeth chattering minutes later she reappeared.

"There's no answer at his number. I tried several times". Great. Just friggin' great! I told her what had happened, and that all I needed was a battery to get me home. She proceeded to drop the best piece of news I had heard in the past three hours on me: "There's an auto wrecking yard about a half a mile down the road on this side at the next intersection, and they live there". PERFECT! This is it! Skip the battery--they'll have an ALTERNATOR! I could install the 'nator, get a boost, and we could be on our joyous way home lit up like the Queen Mary with the radio playing and the heater on full blast!

Elated, I set out at a run the half mile down the road in the dark.

It wasn't a half mile. It was a mile. One whole, solid mile. And it was wide open to the cold, West wind. But there was light at the end of the tunnel... or, well, road. Just down there was our ticket to freedom. The lights of the house at the wrecking yard off to the NorthEast side of the intersection enticed me, and I kept running. As I got near, I was really encouraged to see a tidy, uniform wall around what was obviously the wrecking yard itself, with a nice, tasteful house out front, telling me I wasn't going to be hunting around in the weeds or a rickety building jammed to the rafters with rusted parts of questionable origin. No, this was a professional, organized looking operation, and a GM alternator would be the quickest, easiest thing for them to grab for me. Then it would be a short drive in a warm tilt'n'load back to my truck, and 15 or 20 minutes to change the alternator and get a boost, and head for home, sweet home.

The two Dobermans that immediately attacked me in the yard had something altogether different to say about that. I ran in and they ran out. Barking. BIG TIME barking. Not taking any frickin' **** in the middle of the night in their master's front yard barking.

As their terrifyingly sharp, white fangs and frightfully plentiful and perfectly healthy (trust me: I got lots of good looks at them) teeth repeatedly snapped shut with loud clicks a scant inch from my frozen face, I thought, "This is it alright..." I pulled my bare arms in to keep them from being grabbed and ripped open--or off--and covered my vulnerable throat with my hands. It was dark and I never saw them, or I certainly wouldn't have approached, and would have shouted from a distance for help. No, ask anyone who knows me: I have not been blessed with good night vision, or any night vision at all to be more accurate. So I didn't see those two big, black, lightning fast, stealthy, ferocious killers on the front step. This was a whole new ballgame, and all because that googly-eyed Wullerton jackass wouldn't sell me his used frickin' worn out piece of garbage battery for the price of two brand new ones.

Taking advantage of fact the two dogs not quite having their night ambush game perfectly synchronized, and being both in front of me instead of one in front and one behind, I very, very carefully and gingerly started backing away. Maybe their focus wasn't so much on slaughtering prey as it was defending their master's property, and that's why they were both between me and the house. I was prayerful that the front yard light would snap on, their master's voice would sharply order them to stand down, and he would understandably gruffly and authoritatively demand what I was doing there. My answer would be perfectly logical, a fistful of dollars would be his for helping me out of my sticky situation, and we would laugh about his dogs practically tearing my face off and me nearly crapping myself there and then.

But that wouldn't be the case here because nobody was frickin' home. No, the very people that could have helped me thought that it would be a good night to take their ill-gotten gains for their junk friggin' parts and go somewhere to drink themselves blind and slobbering so their ***hole bloodthirsty dawgs could kill an innocent victim in their front yard in (very) cold blood and have him all eaten but his soiled underwear before they dragged their useless drunken hillbilly hides back home.

Not dead in body yet, only in mind, I kept backing away. As the scrunching of the gravel under my shoes gave way to the near-silence of the pavement, the dogs lessened in their ferocity. By the (life)time I hit the yellow line, their formerly rigid bodies just kind of shrugged, and their infuriated, totally domineering, bellowing barks simmered down and tapered off to a slightly less heart stopping ruffing. Satisfied I was thoroughly chastened to not come back any time soon, they turned in unison, and trotted back into the yard under the breaking moonlight, in that peculiar, toe'd in, skinny back legged dog gait, while still throwing the occasional disgusted, muffled 'wufff' over their shoulders back at me, but obviously very happy with themselves indeed and probably congratulating each other on a job well done.

Not completely convinced they were done, and not taking any chances, I kept backing up, but a little faster now. Once I was positive they really were done with me, I turned and started to walk. I walked for a bit as I tried to stave off a pending heart attack, and then stopped for another pee, rather than just ending up peeing myself out of sheer PTSD shaking-like-a-leaf loss of control. And cold. Oh, man, the wind was biting now. The clouds were torn open far above like thin cotton quilting, and moving to the East in a hurried fashion as if to try to escape the cold wind themselves. The moon shone through in their passing, vacillating the ground between semi-light and semi-darkness in a moving pattern shadowing and almost mirroring the clouds on high. Their dark, snaky shadows undulated smoothly across the fields, through the ditch and up onto and across the road like towed velvet streamers, in an overall effect that wasn't exactly settling. A few gnarled, spiky, naked trees, and you would have had the perfect Halloween-like night. But I didn't need any trees for that. I already had the crap scared outta me. And the pee too. The pee for sure. I can with utmost surety state was the shakiest pee pattern of my entire life. If there was snow on the ground for it to show up it would have looked more like an ECG than any text. In hindsight, I guess that's exactly what it would have been, too.

It seemed to me that junkyard dogs should be IN the junkyard, not outside to accost desperate but honest strangers like the Hounds of the Baskervilles.

Well, that was that. Now it was just get back to the truck and hunker down with Denise for the night. I think I forgot to mention I was only wearing shorts and a tshirt. You know the way your legs can get a purpled, mottled look when you're really chilled? I'm sure mine could have only aspired to such an appearance at that point. I couldn't believe I had a mile to go back in this bitter, piercing cold, and now I was going much more against the wind than when I was coming to get mauled by Sanford & Sons' mutts.

A little too frazzled to really run by this time, and pretty darn relieved I was actually still alive and not missing anything important, I alternated--oh, heck, that seems like a bad word now--VARIED between walking and jogging. About half the freezing way back, as I walked along, I heard, up ahead in the ditch, a rustling of grass. Probably a rat, scurrying for cover because it heard me walking on the gravel shoulder as it was easier on my cold feet than the hard asphalt. But, no: I heard it again. Closer. I was getting closer. It was getting closer. It wasn't moving like a rat; it was much more steady and fluid and uniform in movement instead of darting and scurrying and hesitating. Like it had a purpose or was domesticated. As I walked forward, it seemed to be coming towards me in the tall, wind-blown grass in the ditch. I approached the place it was, and saw the grass parting as it was coming up the incline to the verge of the ditch to meet me, snuffling with an obviously plugged up nose. A band of the torn cloud above obscured the ditch for a moment, just as I realized what it was: a PUPPY! Excitedly, I bent down and called it as a clear spot in the clouds began to drift over the moon again; "Here, puppy, puppy, puppy!" My puppy jumped out of the ditch almost into my hands for its grateful rescue as the full moonlight sprayed down over us, and I found myself face to face with my roly poly little lost black and white pet... with a STRIPE down its back!

A SKUNK!

"SHIT!"

The cunning, stalking little stink rat and this awful night conspired together to fool my poor, shell-shocked, over-stressed, feeble frozen mind into thinking it was a helpless lost little puppy. It kept its signature tail down the whole time so I couldn't see it. For the second time in not fifteen minutes, I was ambushed and attacked at the side of the road in the dark and the cold in this miserable hellhole of a place. But this was a whole different kind of skunk attack; it was a forward attack with teeth, not a typical skunk's business end with barf-inducing spray. This was just ALL wrong.

It lunged and snapped at my ankles and feet as I hopped and jumped and dodged its attacks. Even in my sorry state, I knew that I was dealing with something here nobody ever wants to encounter up close and personal-like: RABIES. This little bugger was stark raving NUTZ, he was FILTHY dirty, and he was snapping and snarling like a little dog (I had that much right) as he lunged again and again at me. I jumped and danced high over him like some kind of spastic court jester, or the hapless sap in those cheap westerns getting his boots shot at. He never raised his tail once. His little pea brain was so warped by the disease that the thought of his natural defenses totally eluded him. No, in his severely compromised and diminished mental state, he now thought he was a freaking doberman too, and he was making his very best effort to bite chunks out of me as he lunged and snapped at anything within reach and with everything he had. Thankfully being very agile and athletic, and gifted with great reflexes, with the surplus of having my entire system still pumped full of adrenaline to the red line from the near-death, tag team junkyard dog attack, I avoided his every move, and finally launched myself extra-high and forward on one jump, away from him.

I really, actually, hit the ground running. I sprinted away from that rabid skunk, those demented dobermans, and those good for nothing drunken hillbilly scrapyard scammers, loudly bemoaning the whole wretched, sordid affair of this never-ending, hellacious night, FURIOUS that that low down, no good, dirty rotten worthless Wullerton SOB was too damn stupid to know a Golden Opportunity when it literally knocked on his door, and he was solely to blame for all of this.

Being that I was a whole lot faster moving in those days, and there was no way any skunk in any hopped up diseased condition could have possibly successfully pursued me, I quickly put some much-needed distance between the two of us. Relieved that I now had that threat behind me, too, I settled down into one very ill-mannered, grumpy trot, plotting my revenge on the whole darn works of them. Napalm would be the answer. Yeah: scorched earth. As the clouds continued to run away from the wind, I wondered what would relish trying to kill me next in this god forsaken place with its useless people, vicious animals, creepy atmosphere, and downright bone chilling cold. And crap rotten luck.

The positive slant I generally tried to apply to everything was now switched to Off. I tried to see ONE GOOD THING come of this miserable rotten night and it turned out to be a rabid friggin' skunk.

In complete resignation, my Scottish pride deeply wounded, but myself otherwise unscathed, I saw the truck's windshield glinting in the moonlight in the distance, egging me on. That was all I wanted right then: shelter. I finally got back to it, and grabbed the door handle and jumped inside, a frozen block of humanity if there ever was one. A disgusted, dejected, lip curling rendition of disdain of the ensuing events since I left the truck, and Denise only added to my misery by dissolving into a fit of mirth, hearing that I had somehow, in spite of myself, done it again. My life is a cartoon. And I'm the one committed to living it. A couple of her, "Pooor BABY!" transparently insincere soothings issued forth, followed by yet more descents into helpless, breathless, sustained, uproarious laughter, liberally punctuated with snickers and snorts. The insult of this unforgettable night of universal conspiracy against me was signed, sealed, and delivered; complete and concreted in my mind forever. Even my wife was taking part in it by having practically no sympathy for me whatsoever, only seeing the Warner Bros angle to it. Now she was nearly peeing herself, too, from the same event, but far from the same experience.

Meanwhile I was still frozen nearly stiff, and was shivering so bad I was rattling the seat. I always kept a new track suit behind the seat for emergencies, and we got it out now. I ever so gratefully pulled it on over my clothes, and Denise wrapped her arms around me to help warm me. She was wearing capri pants and a decent top, and had been sheltered from the wind in the truck the entire time, so she wasn't nearly as cold. There was no question we were now sentenced to spend the night there in the truck, and it was only going to get colder. My ability to think and function starting to be restored as I warmed up, the McGyver in me awoke, and I turned my mind to the business at hand: keeping us both warm all night. The glove compartment yielded its handyman's secret weapon: duct tape. I pulled a couple of leftover newspapers from under the seat that we used as throwaway mats or rags, and we absorbed ourselves in taping them together into a couple of blankets big enough for both of us. I usually had a blanket in the truck, but it wasn't there for some reason. It is really surprising how warm mere newspaper can keep you. Air doesn't migrate through it like cloth, so, as long as you don't sweat, you'll be ok. Making a couple of blankets of them instead of one thick one creates airspace, which is an insulator in itself.

Our truck was a regular cab with a bench seat, so there really wasn't much reclining. This wasn't going to be the Hilton. The sign on the front door of the store said they opened at 10 AM on Sundays, and it was now around midnight, so it was going to be a long stretch for sure. Beggars can't be choosers, so we had to count our blessings:
⦁ we were off the road, so not at risk from traffic (not that we'd seen any once we made the grievous mistake of coming here)
⦁ we weren't on fire or blown up
⦁ the lady in the window didn't shoot me from her vantage point or call the police
⦁ the Dobermans didn't kill me out of alarm, hunger, bloodthirsty delight, or sheer boredom
⦁ I had managed to avoid contracting rabies and thereby dying an ugly, foaming-at-the-mouth, insanity-ridden death, quarantined in a cell for everyone else's protection, while medical professionals looked on and took notes
⦁ I wasn't skunk sprayed either, or I wouldn't be in the truck now
⦁ I didn't just plain give up and sit down on side of the road to freeze to death
⦁ regardless of wind, rain, snow, or sleet, we were fully sheltered and in a completely survivable situation according to the earlier forecast
⦁ we could lock the doors and be fairly secure while we slept. If someone did try to break in they were going to receive multiple and enthusiastic applications of a Johnson bar to the head, and even without it this would have been an EXCEPTIONALLY poor choice of nights to trifle with me

The New Plan was to call Dad at 10 AM when the store opened (I didn't want to take my chances with that upstairs lady again). I'd get him to take my Firebird into Cobden and pick up the daily papers, come down here and we'd swap batteries and head for home. Then load the route car and go do the paper run. It would be the latest run ever, but here we were and nothing short of a miracle was going to get us out of it any sooner. Dad was in his early 80's by this time, and sliding into a blissful, happy forgetfulness and carefree, lah-dee-dah lack of concentration, so even if I could have got him on the phone, I didn't want him out late at night, three quarters of an hour from home, in an unfamiliar place.

We settled in to wait. It was an uncomfortable night, but mostly it was just interminably long. Waiting for 10 AM from midnight, with no comfort, no amenities, and not much room is a little hard on the nerves, to say the least, but we got through it. The maddening part was the sun coming up so early, but still nothing it could do for us. It was cold, but the wind had almost completely subsided. Jack Frost had cavorted freely around the countryside after we went to sleep and vestiges of his handiwork were visible everywhere, but especially in the silvery, curlicue'd layer of ice ornately painted on all the truck windows. The sun slowly melted that as it rose above the horizon, arcing into the clear Eastern sky, quickly warming the day. It was definitely and thankfully going to be a much warmer day than yesterday.

10 AM finally came and the store finally opened. Customers started to trickle in. I was very irritated to see the rack of new batteries hidden from view from outside, but just inside the main door. We couldn't tell the night before whether they really had any or not, not that it mattered; it wouldn't have done any good anyway. Finding out they had to be charged was just icing on the cake. I would have just yanked one and threw it in the truck and went, but, no, they weren't charged. What good are batteries like that?

I called Dad from the store's phone, and gave him very, very careful instructions on how to find us after picking up the day's papers: "Just come down Highway 17 past Arnprior about 15 minutes, and watch for the big sign saying 'County Road 49'. Turn LEFT onto that and we'll be at the first gas station on the left. Repeat: Turn LEFT, and THE FIRST GAS STATION ON THE LEFT. It'll take you about 50 minutes at the speed limit after leaving Cobden". He assured me he had it and hung up the phone.

Under 15 minutes to Cobden, 2 or 3 minutes to pick up the papers, and 50 minutes to here; in just over an hour we're finally going to be putting this whole nightmare thing to rest. We grabbed some junk food to eat, and sat down outside at a picnic table in the powerful sun to enjoy the first real warmth we'd felt since yesterday afternoon. The truck and trailer were only blocking the propane tank, but not the gas pumps, so it wasn't much of a problem.

As the hour rolled around, to hedge our bet against how things had been going, we both walked out to the road to watch for Dad. Some time went by, and probably less than it seemed, but presently, in the distance, I saw the very welcome sight of my cream and tan '85 Firebird SE turning left onto 49 from the Hwy 17 exit, and coming toward us. It picked up speed with what sounded like a fairly heavy foot, and came on. Relaxing, knowing that Dad was trying to make time to help us, I casually raised my arm in a semaphore-like signalling wave and dropped it again, certain he saw me, as I was the only thing on the side of the road. My apprehension rose slightly as I realized he wasn't slowing down. I gasped to Denise, "Wave your arms!" We were both waving both arms in unison as he came steadily towards us, not slowing down. By the time he got to us, we were both out on the roadway in the Westbound lane, jumping up and down and flapping our arms like Daffy Duck trying to stop someone from setting off his own bomb. He rocketed right by us in the Eastbound lane, happily oblivious to the presence of us, the big gas station sign, the entire gas station itself, our bright yellow truck, bright red trailer, and usual, signature, but conspicuous load of an antique tractor sitting on it.

Well, if that don't beat all...

There he was: GONE. If I would have had a hat I would have thrown it on the ground and jumped on it. Wait a minute: as memory slowly serves me, I did. And I did.

Now the sky was the limit. Not finding us, he would have naturally assumed he got the directions wrong, and just randomly start to drive around looking for us. I told Denise to stay put at the road, and I once again set off running flat out East on 49, expecting him to go to the end, get to the Ottawa River, turn around, head back, and most likely turn one way or the other at the hillbilly doberman intersection. I was almost three quarters of the way there when he came on the hillbilly road from the North, crossed 49, and headed on South despite me jumping up and down in the middle of the 49 like a lunatic. He'd really been moving, because he got all the way to the River, turned North one concession, West one concession, and South one concession in the time I had ran flat out three quarters of a concession. Expecting him now to have given up on 49 and Hillbilly Road because he had so carefully scouted them, I headed back to the gas station.

So there went our rescue. We were hardly any further ahead this morning than we were last night, and it was all the fault of that Wullerton weasel not having a heart and selling me a measly frickin' crappy used battery for 250 bucks.

Fumingly and frustratedly walking back, I was 100% ready for that skanky skunk this time. If he stuck his dirty nose out of that ditch again... There was no darkness, lack of night vision, obscuring clouds, or mistaken puppy identity from a frozen, traumatized brain to properly set up an ambush. If he came out of the ditch at me, I was ready to field goal him over the fence out into the field, and his arse end up around his eating end. Take that to the bank.

As I was walking, I heard a car accelerate behind me. It sounded much too familiar. I incredulously turned and gaped, and there was my Firebird, Dad at the wheel, heading North again on Hillbilly Road, across 49. If I had just gone ahead to the intersection, I could surely have cut him off at the stop sign, but I blew that, too. A whole new level of exasperated fury without adequate release overtook me, leaving me frenziedly jumping up and down on the roadway and yelling through tightly clenched teeth in the middle of nowhere and to no one in particular. I had just found out the hard way what 'they' meant by "hopping mad", and, before you criticize me for that, let me be the first to tell you: other people have completely and irretrievably lost their minds over a whole lot less aggravation. I was just venting. And, speaking of that, now I wanted to go beat those snooty, egotistical dobermans to a pulp with an alternator, too, just to settle the score while I was in the proper mood for the task.

Now I was mad enough I felt like I could have ripped someone's battery AND alternator out of their car with my bare hands as they drove past.

Slowly simmering down as I once again defeatedly, despondently, and disconsolately trudged West, kicking every second stone along the way, I eventually got back to the gas station. Denise had seen Dad cross 49 in the distance, because the gas station was uphill from Hillbilly Corners. She didn't see him cross the second time, and I didn't mention it. I sat back down at the picnic table with my chin in my hands, without a clue now what to do except buy a new battery and bum a boost from someone, but who carried booster cables in October? The truck was an automatic, so we couldn't pull start it even if someone showed up with another truck. Dad was out there, somewhere, playing pinball with Firebirds and intersections, and I just plain wasn't going to catch him. Now I had him to worry about, too, on top of everything else. There was no New Plan.

Sometimes, when all seems lost, something good just suddenly falls into your lap, and that something for me came in the form of an OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) cruiser pulling into the gas station and up to the pumps. I ran over, and said to the officer, "I know this is going to sound strange," (I was LONG past caring at this point) "but I want to put out an All Points Bulletin on my own car". The officer raised his eyebrow and asked if it was stolen. I had to tell him, "No, but my Dad's driving it, and he's lost, and I need the battery out of it for THAT truck over there so I can get home and start my Ottawa Citizen paper route..." and ended up relating the whole mess to him to make him understand I'd had ENOUGH, and I needed that darn car and the guy in it to bring an end to it all. He said he'd do what he could and left.

About half an hour later, and not likely having anything to do with the OPP, Dad nonchalantly rolled into the gas station as if he was right on time, and our Never Ending Night finally did come to an end.

I never bought a W4 again.

(If you ever end up reading this, you Wullerton snollygoster chump, I hope you get locked in an ice cold petting zoo in your knickers with nothing but paranoid dobermans and rabid skunks for company. Or at least your battery dies after dark in Detroit).