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Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

When one door closes, another door opens.

I had a Chevy pickup like that. Other than that minor failing, it was a trusty steed. Of course, it went nowhere without jumper cables, and the pickup was equipped with an engine block heater to fool the motor into thinking it was parked in Miami on a below-zero day here. By that time in my life, I’d owned two kinds of automobiles: poor winter starters and even worse winter starters. A block heater was required to get the engines to kick in if the temperature hit zero. My cars all had electrical cords dangling from their grilles as life support.

The first time I worked in Fairbanks, Alaska, I noticed the parking lots I used had electrical outlets to encourage drivers to plug in their engine-block heaters when the temperature was 20 degrees Fahrenheit or colder. No password was required. Because of that, most cars had plugs hanging at their front ends. Their engines were protected by oil that lubricated piston rings and other internal components of an engine. Oil doesn’t flow as smoothly in frigid temperatures, so it can’t do its job and prevent wear and tear. A block heater warms the oil and allows a vehicle’s interior to warm up quicker, so our bananas won’t freeze.

My cars weren’t dream cars. They were close to retirement age and closer to being nightmare cars. A young kin once asked if my Ford (Fix Or Repair Daily) was a real car. It reminded me of the visit a farmer from Matawan, Minnesota, made to the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas. He owned a cow or two, so he visited a ranch. A Texan, who was born on third base and told everyone he’d hit a triple, told his visitor how large his Lone Star State ranch was. He said his spread was so immense that if he got into his pickup truck at daybreak and drove all day, he wouldn’t reach the end of his ranch before dark.

The Minnesotan chewed on that for a bit before saying, “I used to have a truck just like that.”

I needed to jump a car suffering from an exhausted battery recently. I didn’t have jumper cables. I’d loaned them to a guy who needed to attend a dinner at a snazzy restaurant, but had forgotten his necktie, so he used my jumper cables as a replacement tie. The maître d’ said, “I’ll let you in, but don’t start anything.” I rode in like the cavalry (minus the horses) to save the stalled car by using a portable jump starter that lives in the trunk of my car. It worked like a charm.

Later, I talked on the phone with a fellow who told me he was moving to California to take over his father’s carrot farm. He was returning to his roots. We palavered. We talked as Lewis Carroll had written: “The time has come,’ the Walrus said, To talk of many things: Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax — Of cabbages — and kings — And why the sea is boiling hot — And whether pigs have wings.”

We talked about the vehicles we had owned. We bared our vehicular souls. The caller had an amazing ability to remember the vehicles he’d owned and he had owned a cavalcade of them. He rattled off detailed descriptions of the autos, telling me where he bought them, how much he paid for them, and where they went when he relinquished ownership. He had named them all and remembered their monikers. It was impressive. He revealed everything except their license plate numbers, and that was only because I didn’t ask.

As a young driver, I carried on the family tradition of being the second-to-last owner of every vehicle I’d owned. Every car went from me directly to the auto salvage yard.

I haven’t owned that many automobiles, yet I struggle to remember them all. When I was a boy, there was a fellow I knew well enough to howdy, who bought a new car each year. His wallet had wheels.

I went for a walk when the temp was 12 degrees below zero here. A mandatory wind accompanied me.

I needed a blockhead heater.

Al Batt’s column appears in the Tribune every Wednesday.