Searchlight in the Sky

Long, long ago — before my beard was gray, when I was still a spry young chap, 20 or 25 years ago — my wife and I went camping in our local mountains. Just north of Laguna Mountain, to be specific. There’s a long and high escarpment there, with spectacular views to the east, across the desert. We camped at about 5800 feet; a mile or so east of us the desert floor is nearly at sea level. It was a warm and clear summer night, and we pitched our tent just off a dirt track, in some low bushes and short trees just back from the edge of the escarpment. We’d driven to cthis point in our old, beat up Volkwagen Microbus — those things were remarkably agile, lightweight, relatively high clearance, and with a very low first gear to compensate for the pitifully wimpy engine.

Debbie and I were all snug in our sleeping bags, listening to the sounds of the wilderness, when we heard the most awful man-made ruckus coming from somewhere nearby. An engine was roaring loudly; we could hear wheels spinning and people yelling. The noise went on for a while, to our annoyance, but eventually it stopped. With the peaceful atmosphere restored, we fell asleep until the morning light woke us up.

We broke camp and headed out in the Microbus to do some exploring along the rim of the escarpment. This area is all closed to vehicles now, but back then it was wide open. Just a little way down the road, we saw what caused all the ruckus the previous evening: a great big huge American pickup truck, all jacked up, four wheel drive — apparently stuck on a steepish part of the hill. We drove on over to see if we could be of some assistance. I had a jack, some rope, and a shovel; I thought some of that might come in handy. I stopped just downhill from the stuck truck, and walked over. A young man came out to greet me.

You could easily tell he wasn’t happy. He was cussing up a blue streak — not very creative cussing, just a prolific use of the 'F' word. A little spittle dribbled now and then, adding to the atmosphere. He had a big mustache and longish hair, much frazzled — and he was really, really dirty. I asked if I could help, and he said all he needed was a jump start. No problem there; we both had jumper cables. But by this time I was close enough to see his engine compartment, and I was a little surprised by what I saw…

First, there were parts lying about. Not just a spare screw or a not-strictly-necessary dohickey — these were significant parts: the air filter assembly, a belt, some cables, the battery, and more. This was starting to look a little more serious than a jump start to me. So I asked my frazzled fellow just what the heck had happened. As he started to tell the story, his two passengers — young women — joined us.

Now I’ve got to pause for a second to tell you about these three, for looking back at what I’ve written it’s clear I’ve failed to convey something very important to the story. Watching and listening to these folks, Debbie and I knew right from the beginning that we were dealing with people that were a few cards shy of a full deck, if you know what I mean. Plus the light bulbs were clearly of the low-wattage variety. And as if that weren’t enough to make the social interaction a bit awkward, the girls spoke in some language that used English words, but apparently assigned different meanings to them — and the word “like” was heard from them as often as the 'F' word from him. I truly felt like I had been injected in to some kind of low-budget Hollyworld set…

But no, this was for real. As best I could tell from the story the guy told us, they had been trying to go up this hill yesterday evening, but they got stuck. How you could get stuck on such a gentle hill with a jacked-up four-wheel drive vehicle is beyond me, but somehow they seem to have done it. He told us that he backed down several times, and made flying starts at the hill, only to get stuck each time. Finally, on the final attempt, he decided that he was using the wrong strategy (of course he didn’t use any three-syllable words like “strategy"). His new strategy: starting from where he got stuck, rev up the engine as fast as it would go, all four wheels spinning madly. I guess he figured that he’d dig his way up or something.

This was the noise that had so offended us the preceding night.

But fate intervened — the engine caught on fire. I suspect something rather more drastic than just a fire happened first — a lifter or valve gone awry, perhaps. But whatever the actual cause of the fire, he was now sitting in a vehicle with flames coming out the front. Even my frazzled fellow had enough on the ball to know that wasn’t a good thing. Now you or I, were we to somehow find ourselves in this situation, would probably turn off the ignition as our very first action. Ah, but not our super-hero, no, not he. He left the truck running (though he was clever enough to take it out of gear), jumped out, threw open the hood (burning his hands in the process), and observed that the flames were erupting from the air cleaner. Remember, the engine is still running at this point, and flames are shooting from it. I knew he was reasonably accurate about this, because the inside of his engine compartment was a mass of charred and melted plastic and rubber parts.

Of course he had no fire extinguisher, so he did what any lobotomized gerbil would do: he jumped up into the burning engine compartment, unscrewed the wingnut holding the air filter assembly in place, and yanked it off. The flames that had before then been deflected sideways by the air filter then shot straight up — into his face, which explained the charring on his shirt and the red patches on his face.

Now my frazzled fellow jumped down from the engine compartment and surveyed the situation. Let’s see: the engine is running, half the engine compartment is burned or melted, and flames are shooting straight up, spraying along the upraised hood. Obviously (if your intellectual capacity is approximately the same as an earthworm’s) the answer is dirt — scoop up dirt from along the road, and throw it down the throat of the carburetor, that’s the ticket!

Now, to most of us the results of such an action are quite forseeable. But my frazzled friend professed to be pleased with how well the dirt put out the fire, but a little puzzled as to why the engine suddenly stopped running. Once the fire was out, he went back into the cab and tried to restart it (thinking that at last they could resume digging their way up the hill), but alas, the engine wouldn’t start. So he puttered around a bit until it occurred to him to check the spark plugs. He pulled one out, and what he saw triggered about half his complement of 14 neurons, indicating that he might be on to something here: the spark plug gap was completely choked up with a nice aggregate of oiled dirt and sand. Ah, ha! Just a little spark plug cleaning, that’s all that was needed!

So, my frazzled friend pulled out all the spark plugs, dug around with his finger to scrape out the oily mess (he described this as “picking his truck’s nose” — lovely), and cleaned all the plugs with gasoline and a rag. He put it all back together, and darn it, the engine still wouldn’t start. He kept trying, and trying, and trying, but nothing happened. Except, of course, he ran the battery completely down.

Which was why he needed a jump start, of course.

Oh, my. Were you in my shoes, what would you do at this point? What I did was to gently suggest to him that perhaps his problem was a bit more serious than just a battery. I got absolutely nowhere with this line of discussion — he took one look at me, dismissed any possibility that this geek could know the slightest thing about how an engine worked, and just insisted that all he needed was a jump start.

Somewhere in all this story-telling, I asked the girls how they did through the night. And somewhere in their completely incoherent response was one memorable nugget that has stuck in my brain ever since. One of the girls was complaining about how hard it was to go to sleep, because “…there was this big searchlight in the sky, all night, and it never went away!” The searchlight this fine specimen of young female gerbilhood was referring to was, of course, the moon. We had a fine full moon on that night. At the time I heard this, I didn’t believe anyone could really be that ignorant (now, in my dotage, I realize that wasn’t even a particularly remarkable display of ignorance — I’ve seen much better). But at that moment, early in my life, it seemed completely astonishing that someone old enough to drink, drive, vote, and get pregnant could really be unaware of the phenomenon of a full moon. But further questioning of the young lass established two things: that she really was that ignorant, and that I had insulted the gerbils of the world by claiming she was their intellectual equal. This little vignette has stuck in my head all these years, and every time (like this evening) I see a beautiful full moon, I’m transported back to that memorable experience…

My frazzled friend couldn’t get a jumpstart from me, as our ancient Microbus had a 6 volt electrical system, and his truck was a 12 volt system. So I ended up giving him a lift back to the town of Laguna, dropping him off so he could find a mechanic to help him. He insisted on bringing his battery along, as he was still certain that all he needed was to get it charged up, and he’d be on his way. We never did find out the end of his story; all we really know for sure is that his truck was gone the next time we went up to those parts.

Those girls are proabably in their late 30s or early 40s now. Do you suppose it would be fun to somehow find them, and see how they turned out? Or are we better off letting it remain a mystery?