Reports of the Éclair’s demise were premature. The
air-conditioning continues to put a strain on the engine, but with clean oil, a
new exhaust system, and new front brake pads she made it through Pennsylvania
and back on I-80 during the heat wave.
I hadn’t been planning on driving to Cleveland, but I picked
up two hitchhikers who wanted to go there, and one of them was my nephew, so I
took them. My nephew, Pat, is from Oregon, and it was the first time
he’d ever been in Pennsylvania. His vision lent interest to tired old I-80. Pat
had the same response that I had had to a certain sign I first saw more than
thirty years ago, when my father drove me out east to college. “Scrotum?” he
said, as we passed the sign for Scotrun.
He was also amused by someone's having plastered jolly red stickers on many of the deer-crossing signs, just over the deer’s nose, making all the deer in Pennsylvania into Rudolph. He
was not amused by the mile markers, which are actually tenth-of-a-mile markers.
“These are going to drive me crazy,” he said. Pennsylvania is approximately three hundred miles wide, so that’s three
thousand tenth-of-a-mile markers, ticking by at the rate of ten a minute. It does seem excessive.
On the drive back, I took my usual
detour off I-80 at Milesburg and headed over the mountain to Route 45, where I
stopped for the night at the Hotel Millheim. Sadly, it looks like my romance
with the Millheim is over. I had been hoping to sit outside on the second-story
porch with a beer and a book for a few hours at sunset, and although they had
the beer and I had the book, the porch had been torn off. My room was a bit
depressing, with a fake bird in a birdcage and windows that didn’t open onto
the porch that was no longer there. But the worst thing was waking up in
Millheim and remembering that there is no coffee for miles around.
I got on the road at seven, decaffeinated. After about ten
miles, I came to a McDonald’s, but I wasn’t going to settle for McDonald’s; I
held out for Lewisburg, where a friend had told me about a side-street café.
There was a parking spot across from it, but the street sign, uncannily, said
“No Parking Tuesday 7-9”: that was exactly my window of time in Lewisburg. I turned into a convenient parking lot just past the sign, and pulled into an empty spot. The Cherry Lane
Café was lively, with latte and wifi, and I stayed there for about an hour and
a half and bought an iced coffee to go.
When I returned to my car, a car had parked perpendicular to me, blocking me in. Taped on my car window was a note: “This
is a PRIVATE PARKING LOT. If you want your car, call 532-0527." Sure enough,
there was a sign stating clearly that this was a private lot and unauthorized
cars would be towed at the owner’s expense; “my” spot even had a number
stenciled on it. Oops. Caffeine deprivation can make you blind.
I called the number, mildly irritated that whoever left it hadn't included the area code. A woman answered.
I said that I felt very stupid: I didn’t know how I could have missed the sign, but I was the person who had parked her car in the private lot, and I was extremely sorry. The woman sounded nice enough. She said she was
involved with something and would be down as soon as she was free. I stood in
the hot parking lot with my iced coffee for about thirty seconds before I saw a
nice bench under a tree. I thought, How hospitable of Lewisburg to provide this
shady bench right near the parking lot I’m trapped in. After a while, an
elderly woman limped into view. I sprang up and apologized again, but she was
not easily mollified. She didn't like that I wasn't sweating in my car while I waited. “The sign’s down right now, but it could have cost you
a hundred dollars,” she grumbled.
Again, I said I was sorry. I offered her the ten-dollar bill in my pocket, but she didn't want it. She wanted to keep complaining. As she got into her car, she said, “You pay to park
here, and it’s not very nice when someone takes your spot.” O.K., O.K., I got it already. I said I was sorry. What more did she want? "You better never park here again."
She moved her car, but instead of pulling into the spot I had vacated, she took a different spot. I wasn't even in her spot! My car, with its out-of-state license plates and dashboard moose and
Buddha-on-a-spring, had made her day. Vigilante justice on the Susquehanna.
So I escaped the wrath of the self-appointed Sheriff of Lewisburg
and got back on I-80, where it was business as usual: Road Work Ahead, Bridge
May Be Icy, Expect Delays, Rudolph Crossing, Left Lane Closed Ahead, All Trucks
Must Enter When Flashing, Scrotum, Expect Major Delays George Washington Bridge
to NYC.
We had gotten out to Cleveland in nine hours, but it
took me three days to get back home.
