Cleveland Bound

It has been an old axiom among our family members that there is no unsolvable problem, it’s just a matter of how much money it takes.  However my daughter and her husband were in Cleveland with car problems, and little money.  Big problem.  They phoned me, but I had little money to offer either.  Bigger problem.  At that point there was only one thing left to do.  I had to go ask my oldest brother Bert for whatever help he could offer.

Bert told me to see if I could locate a car dolly used for towing cars.  It is basically a very low trailer that one end of the car sits on while you tow it down the road on its other two wheels.  I located one that could be rented in Gouverneur, a village about twenty five miles from home.  Bert, who had a heavy duty four-wheel-drive pickup a year or two old, said, “Let’s go to Cleveland.”

So it was that we started on a 500 mile or so each way trip to bring home a daughter (niece), her husband, and their car.  We slipped down I-81 to Syracuse, and turned out onto the New York Thruway headed west.  We passed Rochester, and after a while Buffalo was also behind us.  Then we came to the Angola service plaza located between the east and west roadways.  We needed gas, and wanted food, so it seemed ideal that we could get both at one stop without even getting off the highway and having to reenter again.

It was rather late in the evening at the time so when we entered the food place we were alone there with the exception of one tired lady attendant.  We each ordered some sort of a local thing that was essentially a longer than average hotdog. As well, I had a small carton of milk, while Bert ordered some sort of a cola.  Ultimately the lady passed the food over a counter to us, and moved down to a cash register to accept payment.  She mumbled something that seemed to be the amount of money due, but neither of us heard what she said.  Bert looked at me as if to ask if I knew what she said, but as I didn’t I merely shrugged my shoulders as Bert held out a $20 bill to her.  She took it, and then she and Bert stood staring at each other.  Bert was waiting for his change.  We had no idea why she didn’t offer it.  Finally she said, “Well.”  Bert said, “Well, what?”  She spoke again, “Well, aren’t you going to give me the rest of it?”  By this time neither Bert nor myself knew what to say, but come to find out the price of the two hotdogs and drinks was over $25, so Bert handed her another $10.  When she gave change she stood there like we were going to tip her some more, but that didn’t happen.

At the time we knew it was highway robbery, but there was little could be done about it so we ate quickly, and got out before the lady decided to charge us for overtime or something.  Many times over the years we laughed uproariously about Bert and the service lady staring at each other, both rather dumbfounded, but at the same time we never made the same mistake again of eating at a service plaza on the thruway.