Coming Home to Roost: Chapter 8

A great deal was accom­plished over the next cou­ple of weeks.  The demo­li­tion con­trac­tor had come on board and, work­ing with him, I had man­aged to sal­vage those items I could at the same time that he was clean­ing up the site and remov­ing all the debris.

Gibson and I had got­ten the schemat­ic process under­way by me pro­vid­ing my list of wants in the new house as far as the num­ber of rooms, etc., and we had agreed that the new place would be a con­tem­po­rary style.

I was now wait­ing to see design devel­op­ment doc­u­ments that would illus­trate the lay­out of the house along with sketch­es of what the house would look like from the outside.

I had also set­tled in quite com­fort­ably into the house on South Maple.  It was a qui­et neigh­bor­hood, well-estab­lished, and was prov­ing ide­al for my tem­po­rary lifestyle.

It was dur­ing this peri­od that I decid­ed to take in a play at the University of Kentucky Guignol Theater, Shakespeare’s King Lear. I was on my way home from Lexington on the des­ig­nat­ed evening when I came close to los­ing my life in an auto­mo­bile accident.

I had decid­ed to dri­ve back home from Lexington on one of the back roads that winds its way down along part of the Kentucky River, after pass­ing through Athens — which is just south and east of Lexington — and back into Winchester.  The road is quite nar­row and curvy in places and can be haz­ardous to some­one who is not famil­iar with it (and who may tend to dri­ve too fast.)  I have dri­ven the road on numer­ous occa­sions, and even though it was now late evening and dark, I was com­fort­able on the road with very lit­tle traf­fic to con­tend with.

As I approached the down­hill run near the riv­er, I real­ized that I no longer had any brak­ing capac­i­ty! I was head­ed down a stretch of the road that was not only descend­ing quick­ly but was clut­tered with tight curves. I sup­pose I could have down­shift­ed but opt­ed to use the emer­gency brake instead, apply­ing it slow­ly, so as to slow the car but not bring it to an abrupt stop.

After about a hun­dred and fifty yards, I had man­aged to come to a com­plete stop, after which I put the car in low gear, trav­eled about anoth­er fifty yards, and pulled into a grav­el dri­ve­way.  Having sur­vived no brakes, I did­n’t want to leave the car on the road, espe­cial­ly in the dark, when anoth­er car might come along and not see me in time.

I was some­what shak­en by the expe­ri­ence and exit­ed the car with the inten­tion of calm­ing down a bit and call­ing for a tow.  It was obvi­ous that I was not going to get any fur­ther in the Lexus tonight.  As I was mak­ing the call, I saw the head­lights of anoth­er car approach­ing from the direc­tion I had just come and deter­mined to flag down the dri­ver to per­haps get a ride on into town. But as the car approached, it was obvi­ous that he was not going to stop, and he roared on past as if I weren’t even there.  I was just bare­ly able to make out that it was a black BMW as his tail lights reced­ed in the distance. 

Guess BMW dri­vers are too good to stop to help a fel­low, was my thought at the time.

After call­ing AAA and giv­ing them the infor­ma­tion on where to find me, I turned off the car lights to save the bat­tery and wait­ed for the tow to come, which took about forty-five min­utes.  The tow truck dri­ver was kind enough to let me ride with him into town, and he dropped me off at the rental before tak­ing the car on to the shop. I would call the place first thing in the morn­ing to let them know why there was a strange Lexus in their lot and what need­ed to be done.

Now seemed a good time to open that bot­tle of Glenlivet.

I got up ear­ly the next morn­ing and called the auto repair shop, fill­ing Barry, the own­er, in on the prob­lem and ask­ing when I might be able to get the car back.

“Well, Mr. Tate, I can’t say right away until we see what caused the brakes to fail.  It could be some­thing pret­ty sim­ple and only take a few hours.  Let us take a look, and I’ll call you back and let you know for sure in about an hour,” was the response.

“That’s fine,” I said, “I’ll wait to hear from you.”

I went ahead and fixed the morn­ing cof­fee and a break­fast con­sist­ing of scram­bled eggs, sausage pat­ties, and toast.

I had fin­ished break­fast, put the dirty dish­es in the dish­wash­er, and was enjoy­ing my third cup of cof­fee while watch­ing CNN when the phone sound­ed.  Barry was call­ing to let me know that he would have to order a part, but that the car should be ready the next day.

“Funny thing, though, Mr. Tate.”  He sound­ed puzzled.

“What’s that, Barry?”

“We’ve got to order a piece of tub­ing to replace a sec­tion of brake flu­id tub­ing that has a hole in it, but I’ve nev­er seen tub­ing rup­ture like this before.  It looks like some­thing’s eat­en through it.  Sometimes they just bust or split, but this one’s def­i­nite­ly been eat­en out.”

“What do you think would cause that?”

“Can’t say.  Like I said, ain’t nev­er seen one go like that.  Anyway, we should have it ready tomor­row.  We’ll call when it’s done.”

“Okay.  Thanks, Barry.  Appreciate you get­ting on it so fast.”  I rang off.

Well.  Leave it to me to have some­thing go wrong that is out of the ordi­nary.  Like explod­ing propane tanks.

I deter­mined to sit around the house for the day and just be lazy.  It was obvi­ous that I was­n’t going to be dri­ving any­where, and I had no desire to rent anoth­er car just for the day.

It was mid-after­noon when the phone rang and a famil­iar voice came through.

“Hi, Michael.  This is L.T.”