Only In The Ozarks

This morning my friend, Kathy, and I were on our way to a quilting class in Springfield. We left early so we could have breakfast out. We talked about several places to go and decided to go to the VFW post. I know, sounds like a strange place for two women to be having breakfast, but they have a great breakfast menu - FAB pancakes! AND it's cheap. Free coffee too.

We finished eating and got some coffee to go - yes, we offered to pay for it. What do you think we are? (It was free too!), and headed out to the car. I put the key in to start the engine and the car made this loud, terrible noise. There hadn't been any problems prior to this. It was weird enough to scare me, so I turned off the engine, but it didn't stop. It kept making this scraping, spinning sound. I got out and opened the hood, all the while the screeching continued.

Three or four men (veterans, I'm sure) were standing around talking. They noticed the car going crazy and my panicked face and came over to see if they could help. One guy said it was probably the starter relay and tried to get the cover off of it. He said he works on this kind of thing all the time. He was worried about the engine getting ruined and said if it goes on too long it could set the engine on fire. Eeeek!

By now 6 or 7 men are hovering around the car. The guy decided he should take the battery cable loose to get the engine to stop. He said, "What I need is a wrench." This one quiet old man nonchalantly reached in the pocket of his very high-waisted jeans and pulled out a wrench, wrapped in a rag. HAHAHA  Who would have thought? HAHAHAHA

The guy loosened the cable. The engine stopped. The noise stopped. He reconnected the battery cable and said to start the engine. It started fine. Weird! He told me to be sure to have it checked out. We were finally on our way to our class.

We started talking about what if we had gone to one of the other places for breakfast. I had to crack-up. We probably wouldn't have had anyone to help and there CERTAINLY wouldn't have been an old man veteran there with a wrench in his pocket. I wonder if he had once been a boy scout.

Only in the Ozarks.