I looked at Jim and said "What time will you be back Sunday?" Jim turned and said to me, "I told you dear, I fly in about 6:30, and I’ll be home in time for the evening service, I am still having Chuck do the evening service just in case, are you still going to Abilene to the women’s thing?" I said "sure, I think every community needs to ban together to get that filthy pornography out of all our towns here in Texas. There are so many sex shops around here, it is a disgrace, Mary and Bobbie-Jo (church sisters) told me they now have over 8,000 signatures to give to the city counsel."
Jim looked at me and said "keep it up honey, with you heading up the other churches and the good people here, we’ll get all those smut shops out of Austin real soon. Are you still planning on driving up to Abilene?" I said sure, it is only a 2-3 hour drive, I’ll be checked in by 10:00 provided I get out of here before 6:30 and get threw the city quickly." I went over and kissed Jim good bye and said "we’ll talk after the service Sunday, I plan to be back for it myself." I asked "Is Tommy doing the Sunday night service or are you, oh, If I get back early enough, want me to pick you up at the airport?" Jim said " Yes, Tommy is going to take it, but as for picking me up, I’ll leave my car in the long term parking and come straight back here." I said as I walked out "OK dear, have fun and relax, I can’t wait to get up there and get some new or better ideas"
I went out to my Voyager van, and was off. It took a good 15 minutes just to get out of town and on the 183 north. I was thinking how long it had been since Jim and I have spent time apart. It had been years. We started the church about 8 years ago out of our home bible study, now the church is so big, we have to have two morning services on Sunday and that is with the new building holding 4,000 souls. Life was good, and I was leading the way to rid Austin of the filthy scum that wanted to have sex stores, sex shops and allowing the poor collage students to get caught up in that sickness. They hid behind the laws, and poisoned our community; I had to stop this.
I don’t know how long I had been driving I saw the 620 intersection just ahead. I could smell the sweetness in the air, it was so strong, I glanced down at the gages and my heart stopped. I had two red lights glowing on the dash; one was the temp and the other the oil. I then realized the smell I smelled was coming from my steaming engine I looked in the mirror and saw all kinds of white smoke coming from my van. I remembered that time and time again Jim would tell me that if I ever saw one of the red lights come on I had to stop right then, here I had two of them bright red.
I pulled over to the side and turned off the motor; I reached for my cell phone only to remember I turned it in for repair. I know the kind of people around here and they are all friendly. I looked at my watch and saw it was almost 7:30 and those on the road where most likely going to work. I just knew that some one would stop and offer help and I would not be delayed too much. I was right, by the time the motor stopped making the turning over sound like some kind of truck, a man stopped. I was standing out side with the hood up looking at all the steam coming out from my van. He walked up to me He was heavy set, had a clean shaven face, wore glass’s and said "Hello Ma’am I don’t know much about cars, but I think you need some help. Can I give you a lift?" I am friendly however I am not stupid, I said "no thank you, but you could call a tow truck for me if you have a cell phone" "sure thing Ma’am I know a tow truck service real close, are you a car club member?" I said "yes" and he went back to his car and made a call. He came back to me and said a tow truck was on the way. He told me he would stay with me until the truck got there. I thanked him and we started with small talk.
It took about 20-25 minutes before the truck arrived in that time I found out he owned a small diner/coffee shop just down the road along with a small motel. I told him who I was and where I was going and why. He agreed with me that something needed to be down in Austin, he had seen exactly what I was talking about and what I was fighting. I found out that the tow truck was coming from the nearest service station that lucky for me was also an auto repair shop. His Brother owned it and he promised that he would make sure that Steve his brother would not over charge me. He asked if I wanted to call my husband, I told him I couldn’t, that he flew out this morning also for the weekend. He suggested that I wait to find out the problem, that it could be a simple one and as long as I had not damaged the motor I may still make it to my meeting today.
The tow truck arrived and the nice man that was helping me left. Funny thing, all the time we talked he never told me his name. Steve looked at it and said "well ma’am, it looks like your water pump is frozen, it won’t turn and your fan belt is gone. If you want, I can tow you to the shop, replace it and you can be on your way. It will most likely cost $48.00 provided you turned off the motor in time. Or if you want I could tow you back to Austin, it is only about 35 miles away. I would have to charge you $50.00 plus mileage." I asked him "can you fix it today?" he said "sure, no problem, I’ll run over to Burnet it’s not even 8:00 yet I’ll have you be back on the road by 11:30 easy. I said "well let’s fix it, I want to get to Abilene by 4:00." Steve hooked up my van, and I rode with him in his truck to the garage. He told me his brother Phil instructed him to extra nice on his pricing. That for most people he would charge about $150.00. I thanked him and as we pulled into the station I asked him if I could use his phone, I thought I should call my office to let the hotel know I would be arriving late. Steve pointed me to the Diner and said, "we all use the diner phone, why not get some breakfast and I’ll be real fast with this here van of yours"