what a gas

Since returning to the States, I have been driving what some people would call a "beater". It's a twenty-year old car which cost me $75. Due to its age, I've given the car the affectionate nickname of "The Flintmobile". While my car has had plenty of mechanical problems these past few months, it had never left me stranded in the middle of a journey. Until yesterday, that is, when it died at a stop sign a mile from the house. Judging from the puddle of gas under my car, I thought there was a problem with the car's gas line. I found out later that I only needed to replace a clip connecting the gas line to the fuel filter. (Phew.)

At one time, a breakdown would have sent me into a panic. Not anymore. Since I always carry a mobile phone with me when I'm driving, the first thing I did was call AAA. (Since I don't have AAA anymore, that phone call didn't do me any good.) After I called someone else to arrange a tow, I put my car into neutral so I could push it onto the shoulder. Within thirty seconds, two guys in a pickup truck pulled up and offered to push my car to the shoulder for me. After those guys pushed my car out of the road and left, no less than six other drivers stopped by to offer their help. All of these drivers were strangers, by the way.

Compare this to the dozen times my previous cars broke down when I lived around Boston. Not once did an ordinary stranger stop by to offer help. Sure, there were times when the police or a "Samaritan van" stopped to help. And plenty of friends and tow-truck drivers stepped up in inconvenient situations. But what disinterested strangers offered wouldn't exactly qualify as assistance. At one particularly memorable breakdown during morning rush hour, I had no less than six passing suburbanites roll down their windows to give me one-fingered salutes and, um, anatomically implausible advice. If I hadn't gotten my car off the road after those five minutes, I shudder to think what else might have happened to me.

After spending so much time living in large cities, some readers have asked me how I could then live in "a backwater" like rural upstate New York. Yes, it's been an adjustment. Yes, there is a lot I miss about life in Hong Kong and Boston. But yesterday's incident help to remind me that not all of the changes in my life have been negative ones.