Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 17, 1992 TAG: 9203170086
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Paul Dellinger
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
I've owed it since a trip to Roanoke on Feb. 13 during this winter's only snow storm.
Another reporter, Madelyn Rosenberg, and I drove from Christiansburg to a day-long training session for a group of employees. It was brave of her to accept the ride, because the last time I'd given a lift to three folks from our New River Valley office, including her, that same car had broken down on our return trip from Roanoke. We all had limped back in a substitute newspaper car, affectionately known as "old Car 38," which has since been retired from service.
What we hadn't realized on that second trip in February was that, even on Interstate 81, some traffic would be moving at 5 miles per hour in spots. Vehicles spun onto the median almost like an assembly line. We finally got to Roanoke intact, but only after doing some spinning around ourselves.
Nine hours after we'd arrived, we started back - or tried to. We got as far as U.S. 460 when the engine died. We found gas leaking from beneath the car, apparently from all that shaking around on the ice.
Madelyn was beginning to think she was jinxed.
She had a chance to drive back with some other employees going toward Christiansburg, but said she didn't want to leave me to deal with the cursed car alone.
A man in a pickup truck behind us spotted our plight and gave us a lift to the newspaper office, where we could check out another car for the return trip.
"That's two I owe," Madelyn said, almost to herself.
She had been helped, she explained when asked, on a previous occasion when she had car trouble and didn't feel that things were even until she could pass along similar aid to others. It was something to think about.
We had plenty of time to think because before we could start back we had to return to the stalled car and wait for the AAA tow truck to deposit it at a garage.
"Do you have regular triple-A, or the deluxe card?" the driver asked. It turned out that there is now a charge for any towing distance with regular AAA beyond 5 miles, and he thought the garage must be farther than that. Since we didn't know how much farther, I couldn't pay in advance so we could be on our way. We would have to follow him back into the city first.
The distance turned out to be 5 1/4 miles.
But we finally rolled into the New River Valley Bureau office, about three hours later than scheduled, and I was able to again recover the troubled car a few days later. Madelyn may have taken her last ride in it, though.
"Nothing personal, Paul," she said as we went into the office, "but I don't believe I want you to give me any more rides to Roanoke."
Paul Dellinger covers Pulaski County for the Roanoke Times & World-News' New River Valley bureau.
by CNB