Young men and cars

Jim was up this weekend and we had a nice Vermont summer weekend. Porch time. Lazy time. Friend time. We went out to go pick blueberries on Sunday only to find that Jim’s car (a 2014 Corolla, an excellent car) just would crank and not turn over. We did the basic troubleshooting and none of it worked. We were trying to stay on top of it and not just wait and see if my mechanic could look at it on Monday, so we called a mobile mechanic. In all my years of car and truck ownership, I had somehow never done this before. I think I never thought I could afford it before? But we had more money than time and called the guy Yelp said might be good for this. About 40 minutes later a scruffy kid named Ray (I can somehow not stop calling him a kid despite the fact that he is a grown up father of two) with a huge tattoo that said BEOWULF on his arm and a Venmo that was @not_jesus_christ appeared at my place. We had sent him money for parts before he showed up–the parts store was on the way–and just seeing him was a relief.

He did a heroic amount of work on the car just right there in the street. Replaced the fuel pump which is a usual culprit. Changed out some relays. Probed and tested the electrical system. He got it running! But then it stalled after about 15 minutes. Which was a new data point. Restarting it led to a new noise. All more data. We were losing the light and every neighborhood dog walker and political canvasser had stopped by with opinions and advice. And we were paying the kid by the hour. Ray finally said he wouldn’t be able to get it going this evening, was really sorry about it. We said we’d probably take it to the mechanic tomorrow, and we started scenario-planning Jim’s car options (my truck which isn’t that comfy on long trips? take it to a dealer and pay through the nose? buy a new car on Monday?). We went to bed a little dejected.

Ray texted Jim at 11 pm “u up?” Jim was, in fact, up. Ray said he’d been thinking about the car all night, had some new ideas, if we hadn’t made a plan yet, could he try a few more things tomorrow? We said sure, why not? Paid for some more parts. He was here the good part of Monday. Seemed to know what he was doing but, I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I would have known if he wasn’t. Jim kept telling him to talk to me “She’s the one that knows more about cars” (true). The car lost a bunch of oil in one of the parts-changes and I started worrying about the neighborhood optics as well as Jim’s car future. Did I mention that Jim’s workplace was also laying off somewhere between 20-25% of their staff and he would find out that week if he was among them? (he wasn’t)

The last thing that Ray did was replace a timing belt tensioner something something and had to use RTV (a sort of gasket-maker sealant) for one of the gaskets which has to cure for 24 hours. Ray was pretty sure he had it fixed. Told us to start the car the next day and either it’s 100% fixed or it’s 100% going to drain all of its oil on to the road again and be pretty dead. We waited. We slept poorly. Before Jim was awake the next morning I went out with a friend and tried to turn the car on. It worked! When Jim woke up, I told him the good news. He drove home fine. The car’s still running fine. We gave the kid five stars on Yelp and Facebook. Turns out that Beowulf was his son’s name. Sometimes things work out.