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by Rocko Bonaparte
First, I should mention I have been spending my free time (at work) looking at www.snopes.com, relishing in all the urban myths on there. If you have a ton of free time to blow, be my guest. Otherwise, STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM THERE. After reading a few orban myths, and reading a few more, then a few more... damn! It'll be 3 in the morning. No, I didn't stay at work until 3 in the morning, but you get my point.
Anyhow, there's a plethora of car myths on there, and I'm trying to find a way to smoosh them all together. So this piece is more of a test of my creative writing abilities. Entertainment is a side-effect. If you were expecting something about RIT professors or something, I apologize, I'll make fun of them double-time next issue.
So here we go, trying for six:
My husband and I were finally settling down and beginning a family. We bought a nice, new house in Elk Grove, which was a short commute to Sacramento, CA. My husband, Donnie, had a government job there with steady income. We got moved in, and soon thereafter, I got pregnant. It was only eight months later when Donnie Fitzgerald Jr. was born. He is a Gemini, but I think I'll forgive him for that. It wasn't his fault he was born just a little premature.
In the middle of the summer, we decided we would need to get a bigger car. Donnie's Mustang convertible wasn't going to cut it with our growing family. We needed something a little larger and safer for our baby boy. When Donnie's Mustang caught on fire in the garage, we were left with no choice but to get a new car. I was hoping for a 4-runner, but you can't have everything, can you?
The Folsom car dealerships tried to pull too many tricks on us, and the ones in the burroughs closer to Sacramento were even worse. We heard that cars actually get a little cheaper heading out towards the Bay Area. We managed to rent a car with the option of dropping it off out there if we needed to. So off we went, with baby in tow.
Four hours later, we were driving off with a brand-new, green Ford Excursion! It has room for 9 people, which will be just fine when Donnie Jr. joins a soccer league. In the meantime, Donnie senior can take it to work and ram it into the compact parking spaces. We dropped our rental off and began our trip home.
About 10 minutes into the trip home, we figured we would be running low on gas. We stopped off at a Chevron and checked on things. It really was a beautiful little car. What was even better was that the tank was still full. We thought this was odd, since we knew larger vehicles like this needed to be refueled once every 20 miles or so. At this rate, it was looking like it might have the fuel economy of Donnie's Mustang, which needs gas only every 30 miles. However, we kept driving, and stopped at another Chevron. Donnie thought the sensor might be wrong, so he went to stuff gas in it. He went for the gas pump, and I saw him lurch his arm back real quick. He was cursing because something pricked his hand. We looked at the pump, and it looked like there was a thing, sharp piece on the pump's handle. Donnie just tried to avoid it and start fueling the car. Oddly, enough, the pump wouldn't put any gas in the thing. The tank was still full! So it looked like the sensor really wasn't at fault.
Donnie and I are still new to Central California, so we took the wrong exit off Highway 80. We took a guess as to which way to go on the way home. I sat in the second row from the front with the Donnie Jr. secure in the baby seat. I rocked the seat to keep him calm. On the way home, we saw a truck on the side of the road with its flashers on. We pulled over to see if the driver needed a hand. It turned out the truck had a flat, and he had fixed it, but had gotten the truck stuck in the shoulder where he had parked the thing. I got the baby out for awhile, and then realized I would have to give a hand. We secured the truck to the back of our Excursion and started to tow him out. I was watching my husband and the driver from behind, and it was looking ok for a moment. However, the truck suddenly freed itself and jolted forward. One of the doors on the back of the truck swung open, and some large road signs spilled out.
I thought it was nice that we were helping a government man here. After all, my husband held a nice job in Sacramento. I was curious to see what the traffic signs were all about, and walked over to one. It read "Sacramento under martial law." I looked at another one, and saw "Oakland under martial law." Hardly believing this, I looked at some others and saw signs for Seattle, Las Vegas, and Salt Lake City. I was stunned by this and asked the driver. He was startled about it and quickly got the signs stuff back into the truck. Afterwards, he told my husband and I they were joke signs that could be bought in Wal-Mart. He told us to be very quiet about this or else the joke won't be as effective, and the company he drove these signs for would lose money.
With that situation behind us, we started heading south to Elk Grove. The baby seemed to be sleeping, so I rode in the passenger seat. But I was stupid. I looked over my shoulder to check on the baby and couldn't find him or his baby seat. I turned around to get a better look and didn't see him at all. I frantically told my husband to stop the car so I could check the back better. I couldn't find Donnie Jr. anywhere! I started to panic, when the Excursion started to move backwards. I thought Donnie was playing a joke at me and I started yelling at him. But he said he didn't know what was going on, and that he had the brakes on. When I ran over to the other side, I found Donnie Jr., strapped into his seat... on the top of the car! I must have left him up there when I had to help dislodge that truck earlier. He seemed all right, but I almost knocked him off the top of the car trying to get him. Before I could tell my husband to stop the damn car, it did it for me. We kind of just looked at each other, and then at the hood. There were several small handprints on hood! We had parked on some train tracks were some children died in a train accident years ago. Their ghosts must have pushed us off the tracks.
Needless to say, we were quite startled, and tried to hurry home. It looks like we took a wrong turn and went out into ranch country. We had to backtrack a whole two hours, and wouldn't be home until dusk. We decided to find a pay phone and call information or AAA to figure out where we were. We found one outside an old gas station that had already closed for the evening. There were no lights on, and there were enough trees around to obscure the growing moonlight. We parked the car for a minute, when we started hearing "scrape scrape scrape." I was scared, and the baby knew it, but I managed to keep him quiet somehow. My husband, the bold man he was, told me I could hide down in under the dashboard as much as I could manage while he made the call. He got out, and I waited. Soon the scraping stopped, and was replaced with a "tap... tap... tap..." over and over again. But I was too scared to see what it was.
Two hours went by, and the baby started crying. Soon thereafter, I heard a knocking on the driver's side window. It was the sheriff, and he told me to get out of the car. When I did, he told me he would take us home, but not to look back. Halfway to his car, I couldn't help but wonder where Donnie was. I turned around, and there he was ... oh my God... he was hanging from a tree on top of the car! Blood was dripping from his head onto the top of the car. It was... horrific... terrible! And on the back right door was a hook, like a pirate would have!
A month later, I got the car back. It brought me terrible memories, so I ended up selling it. The buyer had it for a week before complaining about the poor mileage. I responded that we had driven it around central California for a whole day without filling it back up once. To this day I wonder what was done to the car while the police had it. They later found the murderer, but he had died of AIDS. We later found out my husband had gotten AIDS the day he died. Somebody had put an infected needle in the pump we had used at the Chevron. It looked like everything was against us that day. I don't even know how to explain this to my son when he gets older. I don't think I ever will.
Well... that was just wonderful wasn't it? I aimed for 6 urban myths, but I ended up getting the needle in the gas pump too. It was a writing demonstration that I hope was an interesting read. However, if you think the story needs a lesson to it, here's one:
If you buy a Ford you'll be Found On the Road Dead. Muahahahahahahaha!
As a challenge to our casual reader, take a look at www.snopes.com and see if you can do better. If you think you can cram more urban myths into a semi-believable story, slap it together and send it to gdt@hellskitchen.org. That is, if you have the drive for it hehehe. Also, the one about martial law is partially true. Have you noticed the "RIT under martial law" signs? That's probably because they take them down during tours, in order to hook in new students... ohhh! But if you keep looking, you'll see them. They wouldn't want to keep you hanging like that. Gees, I'm not going to kill anymore people in my stories. I seem to turn into the Crypt Keeper on Tales from the Crypt afterwards. And I sure don't wanna resemble that guy -- he looks like he's been on the wrong side of the tracks. Woohah!
This has got to stop.
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