"Your engine is on fire!"

Yes, as construction workers raced across the grassy median with water bottles, I, the clueless one was walking around the car checking the tires.  I was 60 miles outside of Rochester on the first leg of my trek to Coastal Georgia by way of Exton, PA to visit some of my closest friends.  Puffs of white smoke trailed my car as if it were a prop in a Cheech and Chong movie.  Then, they stopped, so everything was all right.   Right?

I drove another five miles or so until I got to a hill, and my car pretty much said, "Screw it."  I let it coast up the hill a ways and pulled over across from the construction workers. 

The first one to cross the highway said, "You know, your engine is on fire."
In my head, I said, "It is?!  Then why the heck are we standing next to it?"

Another tried to open the  hood of my Pontiac Burn-eville, and could not figure out the secret safety latch.  I opened it.  A strange hissing noise came from underneath.  That was the antifreeze in the reservoir boiling.  They emptied two water bottles, and there was still fire beneath the car and somewhere on the underside of the engine.  I went to my cooler and grabbed 2 quart bottles of tap water from my cooler.  We poured them strategically and plumes of smoke billowed from the car.  A state police car pulled behind.  Other construction workers brought orange cones from the worksite and diverted traffic to one lane.  The water caused a final sputter, and the flame seemed to go out.

Then the fire truck arrived.  A small army of firefighters in full firefighting gear with tanks strapped to their backs stepped in to survey the situation, and made sure the fire was out.



 The lead construction worker was punching info into his cell phone.  He was finding repair shops with towing capabilities.  The first one was 30 minutes away.  I called.  No answer.  Then he found one in Wayland near the exit I just passed.  Martin Auto Repair — no tow truck but the place behind tows.   They were there in about five minutes.  In the course of loading my car on the flatbed, the chain slipped, and I could have been run over by my own car.  I once ran over my suitcase, but I would rather be run over by a beer truck, or a racing NY City taxi, than to have people say, "That dumbass survived a knife attack, a drive-by shooting and near-catastrophic asthma attacks and ended up getting run over by his own car."  No, that would not do.

What caused the fire?  It left a lot of people shaking their heads.  The spark plug in the first cylinder was mangled from a powerful explosion. It's not determined whether the fire started and caused the engine to blow or vice versa.

Those people might have had a spectacular story about the huge inferno that could be seen from 60 miles away.  Last Thursday, I had the gas leak fixed on my car.  Five days ago, the engine fire would have went KA-BOOM. 

See, God does have a sense of humor.  And He's also got a reason for keeping me around.  I can't wait to see what's in store.

PS — Denise Martin, the daughter of the owner of Martin's Auto Repair, loaned her car to me to get home and to use for the next few days while my car is in the shop.  Small-town kindness — loaning a car to someone you've only known a few hours. Amazing.