Breakdown

Murphy's Law of Sanders Automobile Breakdowns:

1. They are going to occur on a Sunday or after hours.

2. They are going to occur on the most desolate stretch of road that is to be traveled that day.

3. They are going to happen when it is either blazing hot or freezing cold.

This morning, as my husband and I were coming home from a lovely weekend in Memphis, we broke down in West, Mississippi (population 220.)

Some things were on our side. We were able to make it to the shade of an overpass before the van quit entirely, my cellphone had 5 bars, and I have AAA roadside service.

So, I dialed AAA. When asked where I was, I told her the mile marker and the names of several small towns that we were probably near. It took her a while to find a town large enough to have a towing service. We got lucky with Durant, a metropolis of almost 3,000 people a few miles down the road.

We were told that it could take up to an hour and a half for a tow to arrive. At this point, the temperature was 98 degrees and I explained to the lady (who was probably in some cool place up North) that it was hot, supposed to get hotter, and that if I get too hot, I start having difficulty breathing. The nice lady then put us on a priority list and that tow came in 45 minutes.

The truck arrived and the driver, wearing an Ole Miss cap, smoking a Camel, and covered with tattoos got out. He looked like an angel to me. Fortunately, because it is not football season, I had none of my LSU stuff in the van. This was probably a good thing. Derrick packed us up in the wrecker and drove us to the big city of Durant where we were left at a truck stop to wait for Bubba, the owner of the shop our van was being towed to. Bubba promised us that he would get on it first thing in the morning.

So we waited in what was obviously the hotbed of Sunday afternoon activity in Durant for my sister to drive up from Clinton and get us, leaving our van in the hopefully honest and capable hands of Bubba.

Have mercy.