Cheeseheads and Socket Wrenches

A reprint from my book of essays, “But Still They Sing”, available for purchase below.

I have a new set of socket wrenches. If you knew me well, you might not be completely surprised, but nevertheless, I can pretty safely say that I have never had a set of socket wrenches before.

It had been an event-filled weekend, complete with the failure of my car in a strange town; a commitment to a public appearance at a book festival; the transfer of three dogs into a rental car; four ferry rides; and a memorably unpleasant trip home, mostly from dog-related incidents.

I sold a lot of books, though.

The upshot was, however, that the next day I needed to return the rental car back to its home base 160 miles away. I called my sixth grade classmate and announced that I was about to impose on our friendship.

We travel well together. She often accompanies me on my various book-related jaunts, and we always have fun. With her usual grace, she agreed to cancel her plans and follow me up north, in case my car was not ready.

As it turned out, the car was not in a state to be driven, and was not worth a new transmission. We left it there, and decided to make the most of our trip. My friend shopped. I watched the Brewers’ game at a brew pub. We met up afterward, and headed home.

It had been raining off and on all day, but about this time, it began to come down in straight sheets. We had a long drive ahead of us, but we slowed down and drove cautiously. We were making good time, almost to Green Bay, when the engine light came on. “It’s probably an air filter or something,” I said. But then the engine power began to fail, and warning lights promising dire consequences lit up all over the dash board.

The rain made it difficult to see, but we made it to the closest oasis, which was the usual roadside combination gas station and quickie mart. My friend called her husband. “It’s done this before. You probably should disconnect the battery and re-set the computer,” he added helpfully. We looked at each other in silence.

“Go inside,” coached my friend’s husband, “and see if they have a wrench.” It seemed more likely that they would have warmed-over hot dogs and hazelnut creamer, but dutifully, I went inside to see. The closest things they had to a wrench were a Green Bay Packers bottle opener and one of those pop up tire gauges that never work.

Unencumbered by tools of any kind—although I was secretly tempted by the store’s display of cheeseheads—we waited impatiently in the car as the rain poured down, hoping that the engine would reset itself and we could proceed. Ultimately, it did. We set off again.

The rainstorm was of the monsoon variety, and my friend was nervous about driving. I offered to take the wheel, so she pulled over on the entrance ramp, and we performed a quick change.  Neither of us is in the first bloom of youth, and my friend had loosened the top of her jeans in order to be more comfortable on the ride.  As she ran around the car, the jeans began a slow slide downward. Soaked to the skin, we began laughing hysterically, driving down the road. My friend’s husband was on the phone. “What’s all that cackling?”

We made it another twenty miles before the engine light came on again, and we knew it was a matter of minutes before we completely lost power. This time, we were close to a truck stop. The rain was coming down as hard as ever. More hopeful this time, I went inside to see whether there was a tool we could use to disconnect the battery. I won’t go into the process of taking pictures of the battery connection, and of the available tools, and texting them to friend’s husband. We were in the middle of rural Wisconsin, and the signal wasn’t good, so finally, I made an executive decision. I splurged on a $9.99 set of socket wrenches.

I ran back through the rain, got back into the car, tore off the plastic wrapper, and opened the case. They were things of beauty: lined up according to size: metric in one row, English in the other. They had their own perfect little niches for each socket, and three different socket wrench attachment thingies. They were pristine and shiny, and I felt oddly pleased by them. All this for $9.99.

“What can’t I touch while I’m taking the battery cable off?” I asked, but the phone signal had gone dead.

Abandoned by technology, we opened the hood and stared into the engine compartment. The battery was accessible, right in the front. Feeling like Tom Hanks in Apollo 13, I rested the socket wrench case on the front of the car, and tested to find the right size socket. My friend’s husband had been right: it was a ten millimeter. Battery cable disconnected and re-attached without incident, the car started up without a warning light.

Still fairly wet, despite our raincoats and hoods, we drove home the rest of the way in the pouring rain, singing songs from our childhood, cloaked in a heady sense of accomplishment. Friend’s husband, waiting in his pickup with the trailer attached, just in case, met us in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart, and we followed him home.

To be perfectly clear, I understand that removing a battery cable requires neither brilliance nor expertise. But everything in life is about context. For me, it was an act of derring-do. I had stared adversity in the face, and won.

This morning I sat at the kitchen counter, drinking coffee and regarding my new set of wrenches with a warm sense of pride. It’s unlikely I’ll ever use them again, but they will look nice neatly settled in the trunk of the new car I’m going to have to buy. Some people have souvenir cheeseheads. I have souvenir wrenches.

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And now for your gratuitous dog photos:

This is my puppy nephew, a wirehaired standard dachshund named Oscar. He wants to play ball.