Small Town Livin’

Yesterday, Betty broke. We’d spent the day flying through Nebraska, pushing 80 and trying to negate the state’s existence. The landscape never changed, but the atmosphere in the car sure did. All day, white smoke seeped out of the air vents like a giant Ghostbusters’ failure, and near the town of Big Springs, smoke also started to ooze from the speaker and the air bag. I turned off the A/C. Immediately, smoke billowed into the car and something sparked in the vicinity of the air vent.

We screamed, pulled over, Googled “smoke is coming out of every vent in my car,” and called daddy. In that order. He diagnosed Betty with a faulty heater coil and told us it would probably cost a lot of money.

But if I have learned one thing on this trip, it’s that three 20-something girls in a car with Tennessee license plates have a certain pull when it comes to mechanics, electricians and anyone dealing with technology out of our supposed realm of understanding. Don’t even bother commenting that this is anti-feminist. I know very well it is. But if your car broke down in the middle of Nebraska, and you didn’t have any money, you, too, would put on a ball cap, roll into the nearest tractor store, smile and say that smoke is billowing out of your car.

We rolled 50 feet down the highway and into Big Springs Equipment, Inc., a place where tractors with wheels the size of my body littered their stock yard, and Peanuts the pug sits queen (if I owned Peanuts, her name would be Rolly Polly). In the back, we found Butch, an older man with a ball-cap and glasses and the dirty jeans and t-shirt of a farmer, wiping his face.

“Hello?” Steph said. Butch looked up, his tanned face looking like he hadn’t seen girls in here in a while. “We have a question. Our car is leaking, and we wondered if you fixed cars or maybe new of a repair shop near here?” Butch put his glasses back on and blinked.

“Well, what’s wrong with it?” he asked, pronouncing his r’s like w’s.

“Weeeelll,” I said, “There’s this white smoke blowing into the car, and when I turned off the A/C, it sparked out of the air vent.”

“A spark!” he looked like we told him we’d seen a crop circle. We shrugged.

“Alright, well let’s take a look at this.”

In two minutes he, too, proclaimed we needed a new heater coil and instructed us to drive Betty around back by the shop. Back there, two other men in mechanic outfits lay on their backs under a truck, and as Butch cooled our engine with a fan, we all sat around chatting. We learned they’re all family, are the only repair shop within 20 miles and that Butch is trying to sell a Jetta that he bought for a blonde who ran off 30 days later. They learned that we’re on a road trip, keep nectarines and snow peas in the back of our car and used to drive tractors when we were little, though now, we live in cities and are heading to Chicago.

“Live in a city and headed to Chicago?” Butch raised his eyebrows, whistled and leaned back on his heels. “Man. I feel sorry for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Country’s for me” he said, and shook his head. “If you can’t walk out your house and kick your horse in the ass, drink a beer and piss off your deck, then you ain’t livin’.”

Butch clipped our heater hoses and refilled our coolant, checked our oil, wiped down the car, put a traffic cone on top of Betty, got in a water fight with Stephanie and, in the end, charged us $10. We gave them $20 and a bag of candied pecans.

Later that night, we rolled into North Platte, NE, Buffalo Bill Cody’s hometown, county seat of Lincoln County, and home of bizarre, anachronistic Blockbusters that don’t have movies made after 1993. This was an issue, since we needed to see HBO’s latest vampire creation, True Blood, in order to make it through the night. The helpful clerks happily referred us to–gasp–Movie Gallery, where we got a membership just to rent episodes 8-10.

“OK, I have to tell you something,” Steph said. “We’re on a 12,000 mile road trip, and we got addicted to this show in Seattle, and now we rent it every night.”

“Oh, I watch it,” the clerk said, lowering her head and her voice, “I get it.”

We snapped up our movie and–boom–went next door for a $5 pre-made, yet delicious, cheese pizza from Little Caesars. Then–boom–3 minutes down the road Holiday Trav-L-Park for Campers, where we got a 20% discount–5% for paying with cash and 15% for AAA. The campground, part of a non-profit organization of parks offering the “best accomodations in America,” had a pool, wi-fi and flushing toilets all for $14. Boom, boom, boom.

Nebraska, though incredibly dull, also turned out to be incredibly easy. Tune in tomorrow to see if Iowa proves as amiable. And also whether or not we find a crop circle.