Bum battery brings Blizzards

There’s nothing more annoying than car trouble.

Well, OK — there are a million things more annoying, actually, but car trouble is near the top. It’s inconvenient and expensive.

I often think how lucky I am to have a garage, because our first home had a one-car carport. My husband and I would sometimes race home from work to be the first to park in it.

I also sometimes think about a woman in our former Sunday School class who said, when we went around the room talking about what we were thankful for, “reliable transportation.”

I remember thinking that was kind of odd, but it’s because I’m spoiled from having a decent vehicle that works.

When my husband and I arrived at the airport after a recent trip to D.C., the battery was dead on my SUV. I immediately took the blame because I am known to leave on an interior light, and it was dark when we got to the airport in the early morning. I apologized profusely, even though I hadn’t been proved guilty.

We called a service, and the company’s employee said it would be 45 minutes.

I did what I should have done first, and I went in search of someone in the airport who could help. A nice man at a rent-a-car desk gave me the airport customer-service number. A guy zipped right up in his van and used jumper cables to get my SUV started.

As it turned out, the interior light on my husband’s side was on, not mine. I was absolved.

A day or two later, I had accidentally gotten my seat belt hung up in the driver-side door, and the light had been on all night. It was raining, and the battery was dead.

Because we have a stack of stuff in the garage pending a future garage sale, he couldn’t pull his car up next to my vehicle. The SUV would not go into neutral for him to push.

I called the car dealership where I bought the vehicle and asked to speak to someone in the service department, possibly, who could help. The woman relayed the information that we had to open some place on the gear-shift column and push a button to enable the car to be put in neutral when the battery is dead. We had no idea.

My husband pushed the vehicle into the driveway while I steered. After he got the SUV started, I drove to work and left it running for about 45 minutes.

I mentioned a new battery, but my husband said it wasn’t that old and I shouldn’t need one.

Everything was fine until the other night when I was going to run over to my son and daughter-

in-law’s house, and the SUV wouldn’t start. Again, it was in the jam-packed garage. (He sweetly lets me park in the garage during this cold weather.) The battery had a tiny bit of juice, and I was able to put the vehicle in neutral while my husband pushed it out into the cold.

This time, he got the SUV started and left to buy a new battery. I noticed as he drove off, I also needed a headlight.

It took awhile, and when he came back, he was holding two pumpkin Blizzards.

“I felt like I deserved it,” he said. So did I. It was tough steering in neutral, plus I missed a trip to see my granddaughter.

With a new battery, we shouldn’t have any more trouble, and as I watch snow falling right now, I am thankful for my cozy, cluttered garage.

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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