Chronicle Of: the Weekend From Hell (a True Story)
Monday morning upon arriving at my workplace I greeted my coworkers with "TGIM (Thank God It's Monday)."
After the laughter died down one of my old buddies said "You've got it all screwed up Frankie, it's TGIF, (Thank Goodness it's Friday)"
"Aue contraire," I retorted. "When you have experienced 'the Weekend from Hell', Monday (not Friday) is the day all the pain and suffering has ended, the catastrophes have vanished, and my life has returned to some semblance of normalcy."
I can't say all the omens and warning signs weren't there. They were, but my usually cheerful, almost euphoric mood that comes with the weekend, clouded my vision, and left all the signs invisible.
Using 20/20 hindsight, the first of several dark and forbodeing clouds to roll over the horizon was my wife's departure by air for Los Angeles to v9isit her mother and sick stepfather. That was strike one in my weekend ballgame with fate.
The second strike whizzed by when my daughter announced that she and her hubby were leaving for Florida to attend a wedding, and that I had been chosen to baby-sit my grandson and granddaughter (7 and 8 years old respectively) for the entire weekend. Face it, who else could she choose with my wife gone and her regular babysitter on vacation.
The third strike occurred when I arrived home from work on Friday night at about 4 PM and found my cat (actually only a kitten), sitting transfigured, like a miniature version of the Great Sphinx
at El Giza, Egypt. He sat silently (stone cold dead) in the middle of the living room floor with a pained and mournful look on his face.
Later that evening I drove my 94 Citation to my daughter's house to pick up my grandchildren, who at the time were at the time engaged in a scaled down version of WWWIII. They quickly agreed to a ceasefire when I promised to take them to McDonald's some time over the weekend.
I drove straight to an empty apartment we own that I had an appointment to show to several prospective tenants. Of the several couples scheduled to see the apartment, some didn't show up and the ones who did looked like people from another planet, if you get my drift.
After the last couple, it was now 5:30 PM, the rush hour in the downtown, and traffic was bumper-to-bumper. I was in a long line on a steep upgrade waiting for a red light to change when I heard a slight, almost inaudible click from somewhere deep in the guts of my car. When the light changed, I stepped on the gas pedal and the car would not move. Changing gears was to no avail. The car would not go forward, or backward. The man behind me was in a pickup truck with a long tandem trailer behind it, and when he saw we were disabled, he backed dup and this gave us just enough room to drift diagonally backwards into a designated customer parking space for a large paint, glass, and supplies store. I hailed one of the store clerks and told him we would move it as soon as we could.
The temperature was in the 90's and the humidity was high. As we started the 10 block walk back to our apartment, my young grandson started picking up little items from the gutter, like a rusty Copenhagen snuff tin, which he wanted to use as a drinking cup. After I put the stoppers on that little project he started finding sticks to poke his sister with. Then he intoned the question "When are we going to McDonald's?"
I said "Hold it, you forgot we don't have a car and the nearest McDonald's is out by the mall (roughly 2-3 miles away). His reply "But Granddad, we could walk.". That did it! I took them upstairs to the apartment and made them cheese sandwiches.
The next morning, after discussing my car problems with a friend, I decided my transmission must have merely run out of fluid. Luckily (I thought) I have a ROV (Ratty Old Van) that I can use to go get transmission fluid and a funnel. My optimistic side kept telling me it couldn't be a busted transmission, just one low on fluid.
I went downstairs, climbed into the ROV, put the key in the ignition and turned it. Nothing happened, not even a click. I learned later that my wife had forgotten to switch off the dome light when she left 5 days ago. I then called my son to ask him if he had a car I could borrow in case I needed it to go to work on Monday morning. He said "Sure, I have an old car that belonged to a friend of mine who left it with me to sell, after he had bought a new car. He said apologetically that the body was all smashed up but it was drivable. After talking with him I went down and attached my very slow trickle charger on the van battery.
At this point I decided to walk down to the auto parts store to get transmission fluid. After walking the 10 blocks (with grandkids in tow of course) I bought 4 quarts of transmission fluid and a long funnel. Arriving back at the car I followed the instructions on the bottle and determined from the transmission dipstick that the fluid level was fine so the only conclusion was that the transmission was probably kaput!
After the long trek back to the apartment, I finally was able to reach the transmission shop by phone. They promised free towing but didn't know how soon they could do it, but they thought it would probably be some time Monday morning.
T went down to the van to see if the battery charger had done its job and once again I inserted the key and got no response, not even a click. I thought to myself that later in the afternoon, I would call my son and have him deliver the ROC (ratty old car), so I would have a way to work on Monday morning.
When I called, he reported that he had sold the car he was going to lend me and hour before I called and the buyer had driven ff in it.
At this point the horror story was far from over and believe me, I am not making any of this up. My son promised me he would come over and jump start my ROV so I would have transportation to work. He did, and after he left, late Sunday afternoon, I decided I would drive over to a neighboring town about 3 miles away to make sure the battery was well charged. I loaded up the 2 grandkids and set out. Everything was going fine until the muffler on the ROV fell off and was dragging on the pavement. I stopped, pulled what was left of it off and went on, the van sounding like a hot rod with dual Smitty's for mufflers.
Next morning the transmission shop sent a driver to my workplace to get the keys to my disabled car. When I got off work that evening I drove the ROV complete with double Smitty sound over to the transmission shop. They informed me that the transmission was completely shot and since this model had a torque converter, there would be an extra $250 charge on top of the $550 for the transmission job.
By this time I was so beaten down by the whole affair that I just handed over my credit card and told them to go ahead and do the rebuild. The straw that broke the camel's back came when I finally got the car back on Thursday. and found a $15 parking ticket issued by the local police at 7:50 AM, about 15 minutes before the tow truck from the transmission shop had arrived. I just shook my head and started mumbling something about this affair being enough to enrage the "Good Humor man".
About the Author:
Frank Ernhart, retired engineer, auctioneer, internet marketer,writer, webmaster (http://www.frankernhart.com)
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