AAA never showed. An hour and a half blocking the left turn lane onto Tamiami Trail and I called again. Fifteen minutes on hold and I got through to a human. She was nice. She said my case hadn’t been assigned to a driver yet, but she was “marking it as a priority.” I asked if she could give me an ETA and she said that I should probably contact the police—they would at least be able to assist me to get the car away from traffic. I said I didn’t feel like I should have to call the police for assistance while waiting for assistance from AAA.
I was seriously thinking about calling the police, though, when Bobby showed up in his pickup truck loaded with welding equipment and a fishing rod. Bobby said he’d driven by over an hour before and saw me sitting there, so when he drove by again and I was still stranded, he figured he had some time to kill. A few people had asked if they could help. (Thank you, I’ve called AAA already.) But Bobby jockeyed around against traffic and got out of his truck before he even said hello. I thought he must be the AAA driver. He asked what the situation was. As soon as I said Triple A he said “They ain’t gonna show. Everyone ‘round here knows that—where you from?”
We got jumper cables hooked up and did a jump, which didn’t work, as I knew it wouldn’t. Bobby said he wanted to see whether AAA was going to show, so we kept the jumper cables connected and were letting the battery charge up for a while. We were talking about snook fishing when Bobby’s buddy Dan rolled up behind my car, lit up his serious road emergency hazard beacons. It was dark by now. I thought he must definitely be the AAA guy, but he hopped out of the truck, jogged over for a bro hug with Bobby, asked what was going on.
Dan was maybe five feet tall and looked like he had recently emerged from the Mines of Moria. He poked around under the hood, looked through the window at the dashboard, asked a few questions, and said yeah, almost certainly need a new alternator.
I told him I was waiting to get it towed to Coconut Point Honda and they both laughed.
Dan said the same thing Bobby had about AAA. Then he pointed at the disconnect switch on the battery. “The dealership increases the price whenever they see one of these things because they know it’s probably parked most of the time in a garage inside a gated community someplace.”
Dan and Bobby started calling all the parts stores in the area. Dan had most of the numbers memorized. They had me call three of them. We figured out that there was no correct alternator to be had that night, which was a terrible shame, because these two guys really wanted to swap the alternator out for me right there in the intersection. Dan had all the tools in his truck bed and even had an alternator, but “it’s for a newer Honda than this.”
Eventually the car started after taking a charge from Bobby’s truck for so long and we agreed I should just drive it home for now and sort it out in the morning.
“Don’t turn the headlights on,” Bobby said.
“It’s dark,” I said.
So, one of them went ahead of me and the other followed close behind. With their big trucks they guarded me in Mom’s old Accord with no lights, all the way to the turnaround near the gatehouse at Highland Woods, where they peeled off to do U-turns, waving and honking their goodbyes.
