Love's Real Stories

A funny thing happened on the way to the Real Estate conference in Reno. I didn’t see it happen, but in my mind’s eye I picture what happened, and I bet I’m right on. 

In my mind’s eye, I see my cell phone sliding off the tailgate of my pickup as I accelerate to about 55 miles per hour on the two-mile stretch of Woodruff Lane that runs east from Highway 70 toward the Sierra foothills. That two-mile stretch of Woodruff Lane is as straight and flat as an airplane runway. I picture my cell phone diving off the back of the truck, hitting the pavement, bouncing, hopping, and cartwheeling along the road behind my speeding pickup, until it veers off into the ditch bordering Woodruff Lane.

In the driver’s seat, I was oblivious to the plight of my poor cell phone until Woodruff Lane hung a sharp right. At that point, I slowed down and sensed there was a change in the sound and air current from the back of the truck. In my rear-view mirror, I saw the tailgate down and the camper shell door up. I pulled over and bore witness to the horrific situation: my briefcase open, having regurgitated my cell phone; the tailgate and camper shell open, having been unsecured in their closed positions, sabotaged by an errant bungee cord, caught up in the fastening mechanism.

Cell phone gone! “Gaaaa,” I yelled into the quiet vastness of the Northern Sacramento Valley. A hot bubble of anxiety swelled in my chest as I thought of all the ways I would be in trouble without my cell phone. I’m dead without that phone. Too many plans are in flux at the conference in Reno. I’m sure the texts and voicemails are piling up. “Where is he?!!” people are surely saying.   

Only one thing to do: Drive back down that two-mile stretch of Woodruff Lane, back to Highway 70, and hope the cell phone shows itself either lying on the pavement or along the ditches. Would it survive its tragic fall? Flattened by another vehicle on the road? Slowly I drive, retracing my route, scanning all surfaces.

Alas, no phone. I parked the truck and decided to walk. You can’t see down into the ditches while driving. I’ll walk the distance of two roadside telephone poles, peering into the ditch on one side of the road, then cross the road, and repeat on the other side. The ditches are variously watery, steep-banked, thickly brambled, wide, narrow, barbed-wired. I’m biting my lips and flexing my knuckles. C’mon phone! I need you! I’m stranded without you. I can’t even call anyone from a landline, should I find one, because I don’t remember phone numbers anymore.

A guy walks down his driveway. His house is the only one on that stretch of Woodruff Lane. 

“You okay?” he asked. He’s wiping his hands on a mechanic’s rag. “Can I help you?” 

I explain my dilemma. “I have a bike you can use,” he says. I laugh. Silly. A bike. Wait. A bike! 

I got on his bike and rode the roadsides, covering a lot more ground now, still with a good view of the ditches. I found a glove, some shoes, hats, beer cans, whiskey bottles, and sadly, a dead dog facing downhill on a steep embankment. He looked like my dog, Bear, thick and brown. 

An hour later, anxiety level rising, I returned the man’s bike. “I rode the whole length, no phone,” I said. 

“Too bad,” he said. “I don’t bother with those cell phones myself. People are addicted to those things.”

I white-knuckle the two-hour drive to Reno and find a cell phone store. The store guy locates my cell phone through the magic of his computer. There’s my phone, a blip on the screen. “Looks like it’s on a road called………. Woodruff Lane,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say, “in a ditch, and I’ll never find it. That ditch is two hours away and I’m out of time. I won’t be back that way for three days.”

I bless the store guy for selling me a new phone. I’m stranded no more.

Funny, no calls or texts were piled up, nobody wondering where I was. No panic but my own.

At the conference center, I tell a friend my horrible experience of cell phone separation anxiety. She nods, apparently not feeling the pain of my story.

I stare at my new phone. People get addicted to these things.

Cell phones are great, but they deprive people of monumental moments in life. For instance, if I’d had a cell phone the day I ran out of gas on the Oro Bangor Highway, I never would have experienced the monumental moment in which I met the Meanest Man on Earth.

That day I sputtered to the side of the road on that deserted stretch of highway when the temperature reached 110 degrees, instead of wondering if I would live to see another cold beer, I would have simply whipped out my cell phone and called my buddy Tim, who is never far from a can of gas, not to mention a cold beer.

But cell phones had not been invented, so no option existed other than to start hoofing down the Oro Bangor Highway in search of a friendly face. I saw none except for the face of a cow, or maybe it was a bull. We were both too hot to care about the difference.

An hour later, dehydrated, disoriented, and delirious, I veered down a dirt road and came upon a residence surrounded by a barricade made of crisscrossed strands of barbed wire and warped sheets of corrugated metal. Four or five “Keep Out” and “No Trespassing” signs, perforated with bullet holes, dangled here and there.

I realized a shadow in the corner of the front porch was a man sitting in a tiny chair. Actually, the chair wasn’t tiny. The man was huge. He wore overalls with no shirt, and he had a bald head the size of a watermelon. He stood up, and the instant he did, two Redbone hounds shot at me with outstretched teeth and slobbering lips.

“Hut!” said the man, and the hounds slid to a halt. They stood on guard, watching me through droopy bloodshot eyes.

I smiled hopefully and blabbered, “I’m a Realtor…listing a property up the road….ran out of gas…..sure is hot…ha ha….. maybe I could use your phone.…?”

My smile faded as the man stared at me.

“Well I’m not sellin’,” he said, and went inside.

I stood weaving and wobbling in the heat, in disbelief. “That’s it?” I thought. “Kill me or help me, but don’t do nothing.” That was a double-negative, but that’s how I felt.

“That’s gotta be the meanest man on earth,” I muttered to the Redbones. They weaved and wobbled in the heat, and nodded in agreement. I eventually tiptoed backwards, then turned and trudged back up the dirt road.

A pickup passed on the highway and came to a stop a few yards in front of me. I recognized the watermelon-head at the wheel. The Redbones in the back of the pickup recognized me, and bayed and bellowed and slobbered.

The man lumbered out and beckoned to me.

“Git in,” said the man. I moaned hoarsely through cracked lips.

“I’m Harold Robbins,” he said, shaking my hand as I got in the truck. “Here, you better drink some cool water.” He opened a cooler and handed me a thermos. Then he pulled out a sandwich and a piece of pie.

“You took off before I got the gas can loaded in the pickup, partner. A man could die in this heat!”

We pulled up to my car and Harold gassed it up. Then he smiled and reached in the cooler and pulled out a cold beer.

Good thing I didn’t have a cell phone that day. I would have missed a monumental moment in life.

I never would have met the Nicest Guy in the World.