CHAPTER 9: BEARLY BACK
"Dad, can we take the Ford to
Bear Mountain?" Rick asked.
"Who is 'we'?"
"Joan and I." Joan Black
was Rick's current girlfriend.
"What did you have in
mind?"
"Picnic. It's a beautiful day
for a picnic."
Mr. Williams gave it a minute's
thought. Did he want his old car and his son twenty miles away, alone with a
seventeen-year-old girl? What could happen on a picnic? Mr. W. had been
seventeen once himself...he had an idea or two about that.
"You can go if Tess goes with
you."
"Tess?"
"Yes, Tess...your sister."
"I'll ask her."
Tess liked the idea if Eddie Gomez
could go with them. Eddie liked the idea. Joan liked the idea. Tim, however,
did not want to go. Fortunately, he was not essential.
The picnic got organized, and Rick,
Joan, Tess, and Eddie drove off to Bear Mountain—beautiful, remote Bear
Mountain State Park.
Having arrived, they unpacked the
car and marched off on one of the trails. Someone forgot to close the rear
passenger door fully. The interior lights stayed on, but no one noticed them in
the bright afternoon sun.
The foursome picnicked pleasantly,
returning as it was getting dark. Almost all the cars that had been parked near
them had gone.
Rick and his friends put their
things back in the car, and Rick tried to start it. "Click, click,
click...." That sound meant the battery was nearly dead.
"Now what?" Tess asked.
She knew something was wrong.
Rick felt his stomach drop. His dad
had trusted him with the car. "We could call a garage and have them send
someone out here, but that'll take forever and cost money. Mom and Dad won't be
happy. Let's see if someone here can help."
A woman and her two young children
were in a nearby car, just starting to leave.
"Excuse me, but would you help
us start our car?" Rick asked her.
"What do you want me to
do?"
"We'd like to use our jumper
cables and connect to your battery to jump-start our car."
"Will that hurt my car?"
"No. You'll keep it running, so
we don't run down your battery."
"Well, okay, if it doesn't take
long."
Rick and Eddie got the jumper cables
from the trunk, but Rick wasn't exactly sure how to make the connections. They
discussed this quietly.
"Eddie, do you know how to do
this? I'm not sure."
"Yes. Put the black connectors
on the negative terminals of her battery and yours. Put the red connector on
her positive terminal, then the other red one on your positive terminal. Then
start your car."
Rick and Eddie made the connections,
and Rick tried to start the car. "Click, click, click" became
"urrr, urr, urr," but the car still wouldn't start.
"Give it more gas!" Eddie
told the woman, and her car's engine roared... and Rick's car started.
"Enough!" Eddie told the
lady. "Keep it running, Rick."
The four of them thanked the woman
profusely, and she drove off with a smile.
When the foursome got home, Mr. and
Mrs. Williams asked if they'd had a good time and whether they'd had any
trouble.
"Everything went just
fine," Rick responded.
It's said that "bad times make
good stories." The Bear Mountain picnic wasn't exactly a bad time, but
Tess's diary turned it into a highly dramatic story. Eddie starred as the hero,
and surely he deserved some credit. He would have liked to read it, but it was
a secret diary. Tess ended her write-up with, "We barely made it back from
Bear Mountain."
They weren't really in danger, but
diaries aren't always accurate, especially when describing special friends.
Moral: "Many hands make light work." Lend a hand, be helpful!
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