Moving to Austin Part II: A Sno-Cone Welcome to Texas

The rattling in my engine was fairly quiet at first. Elliot and I couldn't even be sure that we were hearing something, or if it was just the normal sounds a car makes. We pulled over to check the tires (one had already gone flat the first day here), but everything seemed okay. By Saturday (July 3rd), however, the rattling had gotten so loud that driving anywhere made us incredibly nervous. We kept talking about taking the car to a mechanic, but the next day was the fourth and no one would be open. We decided to take our chances with the car and drive down to Zilker park to watch the fireworks.

The show was very impressive; the Austin orchestra was seated in front of the crowd to play patriotic music during the fireworks. In Tulsa, they just tell you to turn on your radios at a certain time and they play patriotic music on one of the stations while the fireworks are going. It's not quite the same as having the real thing right in front of you. Elliot and I laid back on our blanket in the park, watching as the fireworks became increasingly large and impressive and the orchestra swelled, until the entire sky was filled with the fireworks of the finale. A funny thing happened after the finale, however--they kept sending up random, modest bursts into the air every ten seconds or so. We were confused and stopped packing up our stuff; perhaps there was another finale coming? The orchestra was still playing and everything. Soon, however, I figured out what was going on--these were deterrence fireworks, cleverly planned by the city of Austin to keep morons like us from leaving the park. You see, if people aren't positive whether or not the fireworks have ended, they won't all go to their cars at one time, thus cutting down on the traffic. Brilliant. After we figured it out, though, we left with the smart folks, only to find out that the traffic jam had not been alleviated in the slightest.

We seemed to move about a foot every minute, discussing the karma of letting people cut in to the line, and all the time the car rattle grew worse. I turned to Elliot and said, "My car is going to die, right here in the middle of this awful traffic jam, and we won't be able to move it or even get a tow truck in here." It was the kind of thing you say because you think saying it will keep it from happening. But that didn't work; the car died so completely that it wouldn't turn over again, and even the emergency flashers grew dimmer every second. We managed to push the car to the side of the road next to a sno-cone stand while I called a tow truck. In the meantime, the old retired couple that owned the sno-cone stand came over and tried to fix the car. The old man did little more than check my oil 100 times and play around with a loose battery cable, but he was very sweet. Elliot took the risk of telling them we were from OU, but it turned out the guy was a graduate of Texas Tech and hated UT, anyway, so he was all the more willing to help what he saw as his fellow UT-haters. Before they closed up for the night and left, they gave us too free cherry sno-cones, which made the $300 mechanic bill I paid the next day seem a lot better. Sure, the bill drained away my rent money, but at least I didn't have to pay for the sno-cones. As the couple waved goodbye, the woman smiled at me and said, "Welcome to Texas!"

We waited so long that the traffic disappeared and the neighborhood was almost completely deserted. Elliot was sitting outside my window on the driver's side, eating his sno-cone and commenting on how friendly Austinites were, when all of a sudden a drunken homeless man stumbled up to the car and started mumbling incoherently. He pointed at the engine and asked if we needed any help, but we politely told him no, that we were waiting for the tow truck. Under my breath, I told Elliot, "Holy shit, close the hood, close the hood." I just knew this homeless jackass was going to reach into the engine and screw up my car even more, so we kept calmly refusing his help as he pointed to a certain spot in the engine. "I can SEE what the problem is from right here where I'm standin'! I could have it fixed in about FIVE SECONDS!! But if you just want to sit here..." He kept ranting and raving about how easily he could fix the car, and we continued to thank him for his help and assure him that the tow truck would be here any second (read: there will be another human being around soon to witness if you try to kill us). He finally started to walk away, but continued to rain down curses up on us for our choice to have a broken car instead of one that was fixed in five seconds. After he left, Elliot closed the hood, got in the car, rolled up the windows, and locked the doors, right before we burst into hysterical laughter.

The tow truck guy finally showed up well after midnight, and we breathed a sigh of relief. Little did we know that we were about to meet a future guest on the Jerry Springer show...

Stay tuned for Moving to Austin Part III: Sweet Life Towing Company