My Dead Battery Story

I like to think I am self-sufficient…that I can handle whatever situation comes my way. I have cut limbs and hauled them to the street, cleaned out a goldfish pond, fixed a vacuum cleaner, wrestled with a lawn mower, trimmed bushes, changed light bulbs in the ceiling, hauled furniture up and down the stairs, painted exterior and interior, handled finances, and executed a hundred other tasks all by myself. But the one thing that takes me down is the car.

You’d think I could handle that. I had a father who taught me how to change a tire, who told me to change my oil, who told me that if I wanted something done right to do it myself. Did I learn? No. I have always been surrounded by men — father, boyfriends, husbands, sons. They always dealt with car emergencies, although I have made many a trip for service and dealt with the mechanics myself.

I have two cars, both Subarus, one an Outback and the other a Legacy. I’ve made it a point to drive both cars, to keep them in good running order. The Outback is newer. In recent months I have bought four new tires, new brakes, and had a few other things under the hood addressed, something about oil leaking in three places. The Legacy is my favorite; it fits me perfectly and has a sun roof and other amenities. But right now it needs an oil change and I haven’t had time to take it to Valvoline, so I haven’t been driving it much during the past month.

This afternoon I put the dog in the Legacy with plans to go get gasoline and drive it around the neighborhood to give it a good workout. I stick the key in the ignition, turn it, and sc-c-c-ratch. Then no sound. Nothing. The battery is dead. I have ignored it too long.

Okay, so, battery cables. I know I need those. I look in the Legacy trunk and don’t find any, surprised that my husband never put any in there. He was an engineer and a former Eagle Scout and big on making sure I had everything I needed … even if I didn’t know how to use it. There is stuff in there to change a tire with, though, but I’m sure I won’t know what to do with that when the time comes.

I call my son due to come home over the holiday. “Do you have any battery cables?”

“Um, no, I don’t have any.”

“I thought every man had battery cables.”

“They do.” He laughs.

I raise my eyebrows.

Then I go look in the Ouback. I remove the tray in the back and pull up a carpeted lid. Voila, there’s a huge built-in tray full of tools:  10 screw drivers — one about 15 inches long; wrenches; tire changer things — is it called a lug something?; a Cheater Pipe, whatever that is; tweezers; something that might be called a ratchet that is wrapped in one of my old kitchen dish towels; some brand new rope still in the package; a knife; a whisk broom; work gloves; and get this — a rain jacket. A rain jacket? In case someone might have to change a tire in the rain. I’ve been driving this car around with all that stuff buried in the back, and I didn’t even know it was there. The built-in tray has a handle, and I lift it up and see the spare tire well, and there are the battery cables. Okay, I’m good.

Now, using them. Uh uh. Not me.

I call my son again. “Do you know how to use battery cables?”

“I think so. It’s been a long time.”

I have a vision of this child at sixteen with his first flat tire — actually two flat tires at the same time. And he sits with a sheet of directions in the street in front of our house with nuts and bolts and tire parts all over the concrete around him and learns step by step how to change a tire. It’s also the same child who last year fills my oil too full and I have to take the car in for service. Hmmm.

Now, I’m remembering the man I met in the parking lot of First Tennessee Bank in Brentwood. He has a business of making house calls or office calls for cars. He’ll come fix a flat, charge or replace a battery, do minor repair work on site. I went over and talked to him, got his business card, told him I’m a single woman and might have to call him sometimes if I get in trouble with my car. Sam’s Mobile Auto Repair Team. 23 Years Experience. 615-613-8008.

I think I’m in trouble. I think I will call Sam.

Being self-sufficient doesn’t mean I know how to do everything. It may just mean I know when to call someone and whom to call.

An Open and Shut Case

I’m sitting at my desk getting ready to do some research on historic Route 66, when all of a sudden, a buzzing vibration noise comes from the garage beneath me. The door is opening. Yes, opening! I am upstairs typing, no one else is here, except the dog, and she doesn’t have a remote opener. I lift my hands from the keyboard and drop them in my lap. I close my eyes and shake my head, as the door rolls to a stop. This is the third time it has happened.

There is no reason for this.

The first time was on a Saturday night a few weeks ago. I was sitting in the family room and heard that familiar noise I used to hear every evening about dinner time as my husband arrived home from the office.  He died a year and a half ago. It frightened me, and I called the police. Later, I attributed it to Mama and wrote a story about how I always told Mama to come back after she died and ring my doorbell. The permanent opener for the garage door on the wall outside the back door is like a doorbell.

The second time it happened was last Saturday morning, only it was the other way around. It closed! I had a dog grooming appointment and was rushing to leave on time and took the dog outside through the garage to the island across the street — yes, across the street! — so she could attend to her business before we got in the car. All of a sudden, the door started closing. Yes, closing! I screamed and pulled and dragged the dog back across the street and tried to make it under the door before it touched the ground, like Indiana Jones, but no such luck. I didn’t even get a foot under it. So I’m slammed locked out of the house. Locked out! Seriously. No way in. Period. My first instinct was to cry, but time was of essence, and I didn’t have it for crying. My neighbor Ken had to come to my rescue with his ladder.

I sort of attributed that to Mama, too, because I had done something she wouldn’t have liked. Now, today? Did Mama push that button today? Yes, there’s something she wants me to do today, and I know exactly what it is, and I have no intentions of doing it, and she never was one to let it go.

So either Mama needs to find somewhere else to meddle, or I need to call the D&D garage door boys tomorrow! I think I should hang my hat on the latter solution.

Gathering and Signing

Today was the long-awaited book signing for Gathering: Writers of Williamson County. I have to admit I was very excited — more excited than I have been in a long time about anything. It just felt good and right to be in Barnes and Noble with writers and friends and readers and guests. Sixteen of our 31 authors participated. We didn’t break the store record, but it was a fantastic showing.

Gathering contains 42 stories — fiction and creative nonfiction — by new, noted, and famous authors. Gathering is a celebration of CWW’s 10th anniversary. Gathering showcases the talent and voice of Williamson County.

Gathering on the Display Table

Co-editors Kathy Rhodes and Currie Alexander Powers

Kathy Rhodes, Robbie Bryan of B&N, Currie Alexander Powers

Authors and Guests

Kathy Rhodes and Chance Chambers

Sally Lee, Tom Robinson, Suzanne Brunson

Chance and Currie chatting with Robbie

Dancing with Leaves

The Japanese maple outside my living room window is beautiful now, as autumn takes what was once green and sets it afire. Red. Brilliant red when the sun shines on it. It reflects on the white carpet and makes the whole room pink. I could sit on the couch and look at it all day long. Do I dare wish that autumn would last all year?

I push my boundaries and go forth into a world of red and yellow — some color still hanging to frames, most on the ground, filling yards, blowing into streets, racing toward me, rolling, tumbling, coming at me all too fast. I take the lesser traveled route, up Hillsboro, through a neighborhood, to Manley Lane, through tunnels of red and yellow, where deer hop across, where I see nothing but a black road surrounded by yellow leaves and a yellow stripe down the middle, and I follow that stripe to Holly Tree Gap, to Murray Lane, to Granny White Pike. The hills are covered in color. The whole earth is pressed out in patchwork.

I stand outside in the wind and listen — leaves dry like parchment blow toward me and they sound like big raindrops hitting hard ground, like a rainstorm moving in, and I let the pattering overtake me.

I wish for a whole day to sit outside in the woods and look at it all and listen to it blow by me. I know this is the final show, before the earth “goes inside” to rest during its cold season.

I don’t want to go in.  I want to hold onto the sunlight and color and movement and dance with the leaves.

Jilliebean’s Boots

Some girls just seem to have it all! Looks, clothes, style. Jillian is already one of those girls at 7 months, with her jeans tucked into her trendy white furry boots. She looks like she knows it, too.

Mississippi Delta, River Country

“My country is the Mississippi Delta, the river country. It lies flat, like a badly drawn half oval, with Memphis at its northern and Vicksburg at its southern tip. Its western boundary is the Mississippi River, which coils and returns on itself in great loops and crescents, though from the map you would think it ran in a straight line north and south. Every few years it rises like a monster from its bed and pushes over its banks to vex and sweeten the land it has made. For our soil, very dark brown, creamy and sweet-smelling, without substrata of rock or shale, was built up slowly, century after century, but the sediment gathered by the river in its solemn task of cleansing the continent and depositied in annual layers of silt on what must once have been the vast depression between itself and the hills. This ancient depression, now filled in and level, is what we call the Delta. Some say it was the floor of the sea itself. Now it seems still to be a floor, being smooth from one end to the other, without rise or dip of hill, unless the mysterious scattered monuments of the mound-builders may be called hills. … “

William Alexander Percy

Happy Halloween!

Look what came out of the pumpkin patch! It’s the grandtwins — Hardy and Jillie.

The Butcher-Block Table

It’s surprising, when the person is gone, what objects or possessions have meaning. With Mama, I wanted some of her kitchen things, like bread pans and muffin tins and cookie sheets and a jelly roll pan. I brought home her two dresser lamps and put them in my bedroom. I have a candy dish, an antique sugar bowl she used every day for her tea, and a framed Irish Blessing. I also kept her pink chenille robe. I slipped it on yesterday morning and pulled it close around me, and when I stuck my hand in its pocket, I found a hair net. Mama was big on hair nets and the very sight of it crumpled me.

My son was the first to set his eyes on one particular piece of furniture that best defined his grandmother — a butcher-block table in the middle of her small kitchen.  Mama had it made back in the Seventies, before the grandchildren were born. She took an old desk from the school where she was principal. She painted it and applied wallpaper that matched the kitchen walls to its sides. Then she had the lumber company make a butcher block and glue it to the top of the desk. It was put together with layers of wood and protected with cooking oil.

For forty years, Mama made bread, cookies, pies, jelly rolls, and cakes on the butcher-block. Every meal was either prepared or served here. When the grandchildren began to come along, each one had ample opportunities to stand on a little stool and help Mamaw knead bread or cut out biscuits or cookies. Even my dog had a turn; every time we’d visit, the cocker spaniel would stand with both front paws on the tabletop and watch Mamaw fix each dish.

Mama loved that table and wouldn’t have traded it for anything in the world. Now it is in the kitchen of my son. He removed the butcher block, sanded it, and built a new base and legs. He applied a copper patina basecoat and antique black crackle topcoat. He put wheels on the bottom so they can move it around conveniently.

The butcher-block table has new life in a new home with two new babies. Two more little children to grow up watching their mama and daddy carry on traditions — the passing of the spatula to a new generation.

Baby Pics

The twins are now six months old — pretty, sweet, and smart!

Twins, Together

Hardy has made a discovery!

Jillie is crawling.

Things That Go Bump in the Night

Saturday evening at dusk I am sitting on the couch eating a bowl of chili fresh from the crockpot and watching Brady Bunch reruns because there’s nothing better on TV. The dog is beside me, intent on getting at least a bean. I hear a faint noise, a familiar hum that I haven’t heard in a while, and it comes to me that my garage door is opening. I used to listen for that sound every evening about 6:30 when it was time for my husband to arrive home from the office.

How could my garage door be opening? Who is opening it? Why? I can see the interior door to the garage from my spot on couch, I set my bowl down, and I rush through the kitchen to open it and check. Yes, the garage door is wide open and the light is on, meaning that the door has just opened within a minute or two.  I close and lock the door, I race to the back door in the family room and lock it and secure the doggy door. I grab the phone and call my son in North Carolina.

“Something just happened. My garage door opened for no reason. I’m kinda freaking out here. I don’t know if someone’s in the garage or not. Stay on the phone with me, I’ve got to go outside and check it out.”

“Okay. Where are the garage door openers?”

“In the cars.”

I exit the front door into the front yard and look into the still-lighted garage. It is dark in the yard; the spots are not on yet. No movement, no sign of any intruder in the garage. I check all the doors of the car parked in the driveway. All locked.

“Do you see anything?” he asks. “You need to get a flashlight and look around the perimeter of the house and yard.”

“I’m sort of scared, I’ve never been scared here, but I am now. I’m afraid to go in there and look. Should I call the police?”

“I think you need to check it out, but if you’re too afraid, then call.”

“Okay, well, let me go, I’m gonna call Todd and see what he thinks.”

Locked in the house once again, I call the other son in Mississippi. “I was sitting on the couch and my garage door opened for no reason. I’m a little freaked out.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. Anybody who has the ability and the technology to open your garage door wouldn’t be trying to get in your house; they’d be in Belle Meade.”

“Should I call the police?”

“No, I’m sure it’s fine…”

“But I’m afraid…”

“Well, then, just call and see what they say.”

I do and within ten minutes an officer rings my doorbell.

“What’s going on?” he asks.

“I’m a little freaked out,” I say. “My garage door just opened for no reason. I’ve lived here 15 years and that’s never happened before.”

“How many openers do you have?”

“Three. Two are locked in the cars. One doesn’t work and it’s in the house somewhere.”

“Could something have fallen on them?”

“No, they’re attached to the visors. Have you ever heard of this happening?”

“No, maybe it’s just a fluke.”

“Will you please check in my garage for me? My husband died and I’ve got all the stuff from his office stored in the garage under tarps and covers and I’m afraid someone might be hiding.”

“Sure.” He takes his flashlight and looks all around and under things, checks doors, checks the cars, gives it a thorough going over. Nothing. No logical reason for the door to have opened. I try to convince myself it’ a one-time thing.

Later, it comes to me that it was probably mama. She died two weeks ago.

Sunday morning my son calls.

“I’m still alive, the door hasn’t opened again, I figured out it was probably Mama.”

I tell him the story. Decades ago, Mama had told it to me.

Mama had a favorite sister-in-law. Marge. Marge was Bill’s wife and five years older than Mama. They were best friends. When they were young women, someone told the story about two people who were wondering about life after death and thought they’d resolve that question once and for all. They each told the other, “If you die first, you knock on my front door, and I’ll know it is you and that you are still present and able to communicate after you die.” Much later, one got a knock at the door. The other told the story about life after death.

Mama and Marge laughed and scoffed and took up the joke. “Okay, Marge, if you die first, you come and knock on my front door, and I’ll know it’s you,” Mama said. Marge returned the challenge with sarcasm. Marge was a chain smoker and died of lung cancer in November of 1970. I had just married and moved to Texas, but Mama made a point to call me.

“A knock came on our front door the other night. I answered it and no one was there. Your dad and I looked up and down the street and around the house and could find no one. I learned that Marge had died that night.”

“Oh my gosh, she remembered, she came and knocked on your door! Just like you two planned it!”

Then I took it up. “Okay, Mama, when you die, you come and ring my doorbell.”

“Naaa, you don’t want me to do that,” she always said.

“Yes, I do, I really do, you better come. When you die, you come ring my doorbell.”

We laughed and talked about this many times over the years. The last time I mentioned it was about a month ago. But when Mama died, I was at her house with her, and she did not have an opportunity to fulfill that promise. So two weeks later, when I am home alone, and finally still and quiet, she comes…and my garage door opens?

My son listens to the story and then softly replies. “You know, um, you do have a doorbell for a garage door opener.”

I stammer around and attempt to follow his train of thought, and all of a sudden it becomes very clear. Beside the door that opens from the garage into the house is a doorbell-like fixture. You push on the button, like ringing a doorbell, and it opens the garage door, or closes it.

Mama was just trying to ring my bell like I’d told her to. Only this doorbell was connected to a Genie Blue Max garage door opener.