Leaving Arizona Massacree

With four-part harmony and apologies to Arlo Guthrie

This is a story about Woody and me moving. It’s a true story, and at least partially responsible for not having written a blog post in approximately forever. It’s also a long one, so pour yourself a drink or get a cup of coffee. Some of the names have been changed, less to protect the innocent than for the sake of humor, but Woody really does call himself Woody, with no apologies or reference to Arlo’s daddy. I just call him Honey.

It’s a moving story that starts with two garage sales, forty-seven calls about craiglist ads, a U-Pack pod stuffed to the gills, fourteen trips to Goodwill, and still two people standing around staring at three lamps, a really high-quality litter box, a file cabinet, and a box of cleaning supplies that were no-way, no-how going to fit into a Toyota Prius and a 1988 Chevy S-10 pick-up truck on top of what we’d already packed, leaving just enough room for two dogs and a cat. This is a story about how you should probably just call Mayflower.

Since the Chevy had no air and we’d made the questionable decision to move in the waning days of August from Phoenix, Arizona, to Greenville, South Carolina, which was seeing record one-oh-five temperatures, and if you know your meteorology, you’ll know that means Phoenix at one-fourteen sounds downright balmy, it was nearly ten o’clock when Woody and me packed up Sheba and Lucy and the cat named Slinky because she’s just so much fun to push down the stairs, even though we’ve never lived anywhere with stairs and still don’t, and headed east. (Woody tells me that I should write “Woody and I,” which I know, but I think this sounds better.)

By three o’clock in the morning we’d made it to Las Cruces and were feeling pretty good about the whole thing. We unloaded all the necessities at the Super 8 and up three flights of stairs—the two dogs and a cat, a lower-quality litter box, pet food, a cooler, our toothbrushes, a dog gate to keep the animals separated so the cat doesn’t beat up the dogs, and a bottle of Sheep Dip scotch I was given as a going-away present—and proceeded to get just buzzed enough watching Match Game '76 to sleep through the heat of the day.

We headed toward Texas two naps later, around midnight and thought we’d drive long enough to make it to actual check-in time at the next motel. I always knew that Texas was a bad idea. But there’s no good way around it.

The trouble started near Van Horn. The truck was running rough and started cutting off on us. Woody fooled with it a while, put in some gas treatment, and about the time we’d arranged for a tow, he got it running just fine. That lasted all the way to Pecos (pronounced PAY-cuss, not PAY-COS), where we pulled in for gas, and then it sat there, right at the pump, refusing to turn over. Lucky for us, on the frontage road just the other side of the interstate was a service station. After we put the cat crate in the Prius so Slinky wouldn’t overheat, hoping the dogs wouldn’t notice, I drove over, where Frank and Julio were nice enough to offer to come see about it, just as soon as the boss man got back, except that by this time Woody had finally gotten the truck running enough to coax it over himself.

So while the animals sat with the air running in a car that is thankfully a model of fuel efficiency in front of Cesar Chavez’s Tire and Auto Repair, we watched Julio blow gunk out of a fuel filter that probably should have been changed sometime last decade, telling us that if a new filter didn’t fix it, it was probably the fuel pump. The boss man returned, listened to the pump click on some of the time and sometimes not, sent the NAPA man to the store for a fuel filter, and told us it was probably the fuel pump. But the good folks at Cesar Chavez’s Tire and Auto Repair thought they’d try the filter first, and then they thought they’d try to change the spark plug wires since one of them was bad, and then I think they might have washed the rear-view mirrors or something, until they finally came to the surprising conclusion that it was the fuel pump after all, but they didn’t want to do anything about it on account of they didn’t have the diagnostic equipment to be sure. So they sent us down the road to a place that did, and with tears in our eyes, at quarter-to-five on a Friday afternoon, we limped a truck that started only by the grace of God and starter fluid down the road to another mechanic, who didn’t have time to look at it and didn’t work on Saturday, but was kind enough to lend us some more starter fluid when the truck cut off again. We putted back up the road to the Ramada right next door to Cesar Chavez’s Tire and Auto Repair, where we proceeded to unload two dogs and a cat, the cooler, our toothbrushes, and the bottle of Sheep Dip scotch.

We were fortunate enough to find a Chevy dealer in Pecos who could work us in on Saturday if we could get it towed there by nine a.m. And we could, thanks to the nice people at USAA who by this time are probably sorry they ever gave me the opportunity to purchase roadside assistance. By Saturday afternoon, almost four hundred dollars later, if you don’t count the sixty or so that the nice people at Cesar Chavez’s charged while trying to save us some money, the truck was repaired and we were on our way. Did I mention that by now the hybrid system warning light on the Prius had come on? The next Toyota dealership was in Odessa, but if we could get there by four o’clock they’d be glad to take a look.

We made it to Odessa, our teeth on edge the whole way, and it seems there’s a flaw in the cooling system of the 2003 hybrids, and it probably shouldn’t have been idling for three hours in the parking lot of Cesar Chavez’s, but the temperature seemed well within range and everything was working. We could wait until probably Wednesday for the parts, or we could take our chances with a car that was running fine except for a computer that said it wasn’t. We took our chances.

And just so you aren’t left in too much suspense, I’ll go ahead and tell you that to this day the Prius runs just fine and gets forty-eight miles to the gallon, thank you. With two operating vehicles, we were fresh and rested and felt our very best and were looking to take a good chunk out of Texas that afternoon. And we did, and had even planned to stop about ten miles ahead to eat and decide how much farther we might make it that night.

But the 1988 Chevy S-10 pick-up truck had had even more taken out of it. About ten miles short of our planned stop, Woody called me up on the cell phone while we were pulling a big hill and told me to stop at the rest area. I didn’t feel too good about it when the truck coasted in blowing steam. But he thought he could just cool it down and get it started again, and I have to give that old truck a lot of credit for trying. A few hours later, with some help from Otis the trucker, who seemed mighty glad to have somebody to talk to for a while, on top of a chance to pull out his tools and chains and implements of destruction, we admitted defeat and made another call to the good people at roadside assistance. Woody waited for the tow, while I went ahead to find a motel and get the animals settled, which is no mean feat, let me tell you.

Friends, if you don’t know it, let me just tell you that Eastland, Texas, is not exactly the center of the universe. In fact, it may be the exact center of nowhere. On a Saturday night, it took USAA calling police dispatch just to find a tow. But the truck was finally deposited at the Budget Host Inn, which had no ice machine or soda vending except behind the service desk, but did have wi-fi, thankfully, and roaches, regrettably, and we resigned ourselves to the fact that we would probably be holed up there at least until Monday. And despite Woody’s efforts all day Sunday, including phone calls to any relative who knew anything about vehicles, that’s exactly what happened.

Remember moving? For two nights at the Budget Host, we weren't moving at all, but this is a story about moving. If you’ve made it this far, bear with me just a little while longer. I’m not proud, or tired. Sing along if you like. With feeling. Just wait till it comes around on the gui-tar.

A couple of trips to the Super WalMart deli later, after a second tow on Monday morning and a long wait until Monday afternoon, it was finally determined that our 1988 Chevy S-10 pick-up truck couldn’t be fixed without spending more than the heap was worth. To add insult to injury, leaving it there would run us twenty-five dollars a day until we disposed of it.

At this point, the cavalry came to the rescue, in the form of my cousin Boudreaux (I always wanted a cousin named Boudreaux), who drove up from Austin and loaded our stuff from the Chevy, along with the necessities—dog gate, sub-par litter box, toothbrushes, and an empty Sheep Dip scotch bottle. From Austin we rented a mini-van and made the rest of the trip without incident, if you don’t count the pounding rain coming through Atlanta, a harrowing enough drive under normal conditions, with the cat luxuriating in mini-van opulence the whole way.

Nine days and an abandoned truck from where we started, we finally arrived in South Carolina, where I started work the very next day. The good news was we took so long that the heat had broken by the time we got here, and the only footnote is a bill for nine hundred thirty-seven dollars in storage and diagnosis from a mechanic in Eastland, Texas. They can expect the title to a 1988 Chevy S-10 pick-up truck in the mail any day now.