We went to town today and picked up the alternator for the family truck. I was telling AW last week that it was the family truck that was not running, ours was running great. At that precise moment E was telling BR the same thing. The battery gods heard us and decided to play a funny prank… Our alternator went out the next day… I drove 35 years before I moved here and never gave one thought to the battery in our car. I had never heard of an alternator. Our trucks are old and kept together by duct tape and paper clips. In any other world these trucks would have long ago been put out of their misery…

Our eldest bought an old F-150 truck for 1000.00 when he was fifteen. It did him well for a five years but when he went back east for university it died of loneliness. Trucks aren’t meant to sit unused. We called an auto wrecker and he offered to take it away for scrap, free of charge… We left the papers on the front seat of the car so they could take it when they had time.

A week later it was still sitting in our driveway.. I called the auto wrecker and he said he had told his tow truck driver to pick it up when it was slow, he thought it would have been gone by then. “Tonight, for sure” he said, “It might be very late”. The next day it was still sitting in the driveway, and the next and the next…. I called the guy again.. “My guy says he got it, I don’t know where the mix up is” .. I sighed and figured they must not want it..

The next week I was reading the crime beat in the Delta Optimist. It said.

Truck stolen in the middle of the night. Truck was old and not worth stealing but the there was a lock box of expensive tools in the back. Someone must have towed it because the battery was dead. The address given was at the end of our street.

I phoned the auto wrecker and read him the article. I’m not sure he heard me laughing over the swearing and cursing that was coming from his end of the phone. I am pretty sure his tow truck driver was not going to “have a good day”. The truck by then was flattened. I left it to him to call the police.

Today, we picked up our repaired family truck alternator and we dropped off our broken one. Then we went to get more paper clips

and duct tape