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8/19

What a nice time we had in North Carolina last weekend. Thanks to my pal Jonathan Byrd for inviting me to do a show with him. The Six String Café  in Cary reminded me a lot of The Point up here in Bryn Mawr.  Many parallels, including, unfortunately, the fact that it too will close this summer. Still it was a great chance to make some new friends and that’s just what we did.

Two of my new friends are Guy Massey and  Bryn Pryor. 

When my daughter –a senior in high school!!! How did that happen?- found out I had a Friday night gig in beautiful NC she mentioned that she was interested in checking out Duke University so we made a semi-family outing out of it.  (Our two oldest boys opted out of the trip. One had to work and the other plugged all the pertinent data into his own secret formula that calculated hours of travel against perceived enjoyment of destination and evidently whatever the parameters for staying home were, we didn't exceed them...)

Like I said, Friday night was great. Jonathan's audience was warm and receptive. He's great, plus I enjoyed catching up with Mr. Byrd. We're both working on new CDs  and it's always nice to talk to someone else who knows  what the challenges and rewards of the process are. Saturday dawned beautiful and, of course, warm. We had an 11 o'clock tour set up for Duke so we made the short trip from Cary to Durham.

I guess we weren't the only parents with kids eyeing Duke's gorgeous campus because the place was crawling with intergenerational passengers in vehicles sporting out-of-state plates. Despite the traffic I found a primo parking spot right in front of the admissions office on one of those tight little one way horseshoe driveways . I rubbed my hands in gleeful anticipation of demonstrating for my kids the legendary (ask Frank Liddell in Nashville sometime) parallel parking skills I'd honed during my short-lived career as a driver's education instructor.  The demonstration was barely begun, however, when a distressing noise under the hood signaled a change of plans. Something was seriously wrong with the van. It lost most of its steering and brakes instantly and aiming it became a serious chore, while stopping it once in motion was almost impossible. The deft pivots I had planned that would insinuate  my Chevy Astro just a hair's breath from the curb while ensconcing it between two late model luxury car bookends became risky at best. Neither would the parking space allow for what was evidently soon to be required: access via tow truck. With a half dozen honking SUVs behind me, I threw the van in drive and deposited it, my family and many of our belongings, squarely on the sun drenched front lawn.  I pulled out my cell phone, my laptop and my bandanna, and spent the next hour alternately punching, tapping and mopping in the front seat of my warm but uncooperative road wagon.

(Author's note: As the record holder, in my salad days, of the most parking tickets ever issued by Temple University in Philadelphia, I was bemused by the fact that in two and a half hours of  prominent  vehicular squatting in the middle of the green on a an auspicious  southern  university,  we drew not a sniff from campus security.)

As my daughter went off happily with her  tour group, the lady at the 1-8oo -CHEVY  (or something) number warned me over a bad cell that only an authorized GM service center (I still had 600 miles left on my warranty!) would be able to guarantee me repair of the van without a bill. She gave me names and numbers for a half dozen dealerships within a seventy mile radius and I began to leave  frantic voice mail messages everywhere. Beth, on the other flip phone was trying with no luck to line up a  rental car for the weekend. The fact was that  no one was answering their phones.  August vacations were in full  swing.  Plus it was the weekend. A very sunny, very hot weekend. Things were not looking good for our little band of castaways until, finally, a switchboard operator at a place called Performance Chevrolet in Chapel Hill took pity on me and delivered me from answering machine limbo. A man named Guy picked up and asked how he could help.  After I  told what must have seemed like my life story, Guy explained that there probably wouldn’t be many rentals to be had this late in the weekend and, to make matters worse, most of the agencies would soon be closing until Monday morning.  Sensing a desperate father on the other end of the line, Guy  said, “Stay on the line, Mr. Flynn” and put me on hold. When he picked up a few minutes later Guy informed me that a rental car had been found for us and that they would be sending someone to pick us up within the hour. He told me to have the van towed to his dealership and that he would let us know as soon as someone checked it out.  I told him there would be a case of beer on his desk within the next day or so. There was. 

Triple A  sent a wrecker. I watched my van disappear down the driveway and we all found a tree to sit under and waited.

When we got to Performance Chevrolet later that day, the news wasn’t great.  It was getting on in the afternoon and a service advisor named Bryn told me that our power steering pump needed to be replaced. (The same pump controlled the power brakes as well.)  She went on to inform me that  a new unit had been located but wouldn’t arrive from another dealership until early Monday afternoon. I  explained our situation to Bryn; that  we were now looking -at best- at a two day forced layover, and  eventually had to make a 7-8 hour drive back to Northern Delaware.  I asked if there wasn’t anyway they could get the part earlier on Monday. Bryn told me she’d see what could be done.  

We drove our ingeniously packed (four passengers with luggage, laptop, guitar and two suit cases of CDs) Chevrolet Cavalier to a local coffee shop that had wireless internet and went to work selecting a motel with a pool. 

When I called the dealership Monday morning, I was informed by a man named Shane Landen that Bryn wasn’t there as it was her day off. Great!, I thought, so much for getting the part this morning. Fortunately, before I could voice my frustration, Shane informed me that Bryn Pryor had gotten up early on her day off,  driven  across town, picked up and personally delivered the new power steering pump which was already being installed in my van.  

The local Walmart did not contain a nice enough "thank you" gift for Bryn but it did have frosty AC so my daughter and I cruised the aisles for a while Monday morning as we waited for news of the van. We eventually found a little scented candle and card to leave on our new friend’s desk. We were pulling into our driveway by 9 p.m. that evening.  

You can watch the TV news all you want but you won’t know anything  about people until you need a little help sometime. My thanks to Guy, Bryn , Shane, the switchboard lady, and everyone else at Performance Chevrolet.