Dave's Driveway

1 Leaving Marshall with Too Much Weather in My Head

I had pulled out of Clarksburg under a pewter dawn. The storm that had baptized the town two nights earlier had marched east, but its echo still rattled somewhere behind my eyes. Josie idled rough, her four cylinders coughing like a chorus that had sung too hard at Wednesday prayer meeting. I chalked it up to damp spark plugs and the cheap gasoline I’d swallowed near Sedalia.

Thirty miles later, on the long straight knife of Missouri Route 20—one of the original 1922 highways—a different cough—my own—answered Josie’s sputter. It began as a tickle at the top of the chest, little more than a clearing of the throat. By Higginsville it had settled into a gravel rattle, each hack snapping muscle across my ribs, stealing tiny bites of oxygen. The road unwound ahead, but inside the van a second road curved downward—steeper by the minute—into the fever alley.

I kept driving because that is what men of a certain stubborn stripe do when trouble taps the window: we nod, adjust the mirror, and apply light throttle.

2 The Double Betrayal—Machine and Flesh

Past Knob Noster the van began her own rebellion. Press the accelerator and she’d surge, then—just when confidence returned—drop power in the span of a heartbeat. Not a stall, more like a stutter. A mule buck. RPMs dipped, came back, dipped again. My chest answered with its own stutter: two coughs, then three. Van and driver in mismatched duet, each accusing the other of sabotage.

Near Rocheport I pulled onto the shoulder. The Katy Trail cut the bluff above, its sycamores already shedding copper leaves onto the asphalt. I lifted the engine hatch. Nothing obvious: no loose wires, no vacuum hose off the plenum, fuel lines dry. But the air-cooled engine radiated heat hotter than normal—as though Josie, like me, nursed a fever.

Temperature outside: forty-eight and falling. Temperature inside my skull: climbing toward the moon.

I closed the hatch, eased back onto the blacktop, and resolved to push west until both coughs— hers and mine—forced surrender.

3 Night at the Fill-and-Go

Darkness caught us just before Prarie Home on highway 87. Somewhere I found a truck stop squatting in a halo of sodium lamps, and pulled under the awning. Diesel pumps chugged beside idling Peterbilts, their drivers clawing incremental sleep before the next logbook entry.

Inside the convenience mart, fluorescent lights hummed at a key that set my teeth on edge. I bought generic cough syrup, two packets of lemon tea, and an overdone hot dog. The cashier, a woman with half-moon spectacles on a beaded lanyard, asked if I needed anything stronger. I said no; the road was strong enough already.

I parked out on the fringe of the lot, nestled among a mix of cars with fogged-up windows, their drivers all trying to snatch 15 or 20 minutes of sleep. I folded down the rear bench. Night settled like wet wool. The fever marched to my temples, drumming a tempo I could not ignore. Cough after cough ricocheted off the tin top ceiling. On the worst spasms my vision sparkled at the edges, constellations forming and bursting behind eyelids.

Out past the truck-yard chain-link, prairie grass rattled under a north wind. The sound made me homesick for Brenda’s kitchen, where onion skin crackles just the same. I let the homesickness keep me warm until exhaustion inked out the lights.

4 Fever Dreams and Dashboard Ghosts

I dreamed Josie was a steam locomotive, pistons pumping slow but sure toward some indigo horizon. Every valve tap echoed like Gloria’s footfalls down Spainhower’s kindergarten hall. I tried to wave her into the engineer’s seat, but she faded into black smoke, leaving only the smell of chalk dust and Juicy Fruit gum. The locomotive paused at an endless crossing; my mother appeared, hammering a “ROAD CLOSED” sign into the ballast. I wanted to ask which road, but the whistle blew, shrill as a cough, and I woke tasting copper.

Three-fifteen a.m. Diesel rigs idling, lights of the truck stop flickering through condensation on the windshield. My throat burned like hot tar. I gulped cough syrup, chased it with a swallow of lukewarm water, and lay back listening to the engine of my own body misfire in the dark.

5 Morning Without Mercy

Dawn came colorless. The windshield was filmed with faint ice crystals. I cracked the sliding door; prairie air knifed inside, smelling of manure and diesel exhaust. Fever sweat chilled against my spine.

Josie fired on the second try—bless her—but the idle still hunted. We rolled onto highway 87, a nondescript two-lane backroad. Forty-five minutes later she hiccupped three times in a row and I thought a valve might have jumped ship. I coasted to the dangerously narrow shoulder. Semi-trucks screamed by, buffeting the van, setting it rocking like a canoe.

I waited, engine running, foot feathering throttle. The sputter evened out. I practiced deep breaths—inhale four counts, exhale four—but each exhale dissolved into coughing fits that left stars exploding at the edges of vision.

I plotted a course to Wamego, Kansas, not for any particular sightseeing or cultural experience, my survival instinct had kicked in, and I needed a shelter from the storm, a place where both Josie and I could heal. (In hindsight, I sorely regret not having ventured into the “OZ Museum,” where “all things Oz” were on display, from the original movie through Michael Jackson’s remake.)

Wamego happened to be the hometown of a friend of a VW buddy—Kevin—whom I’d never met; all I knew about him was from his postings online and several phone calls and texts we exchanged when Josie had me flummoxed. 

Kevin sang the praises of Dave Cook who owns several VWs, including a bus and a Westfalia (pop-top camper) Vanagon. Dave was supposed to be a brilliant troubleshooter, and if anyone could figure out Josie’s intermittent bucking, it would be Dave. But first I had to get better.

I camped out in Dave’s driveway for a few days. On the first day I surrendered and sought medical care. Wamego had a walk-in clinic attached to its healthcare center, and I took advantage of it.

6 Four Walls of Fluorescent Mercy

Wamego’s urgent-care lobby smelled of Lysol and plastic upholstery. A television mounted too high on the wall broadcast headlines about October retail forecasts: “Optimism despite supply chain woes.” I chuckled, then coughed. My name was called by a nurse whose badge read Lillian. Her voice was the color of chamomile: “Let’s fix you up, hon.”

Flu test negative. Strep negative. “Likely viral bronchitis,” the doc said. He was all business with the bedside manner of a Marine sergeant doing inspection. He printed scripts for cough suppressant and antibiotic “in case of secondary infection.” I told him I lived in a van older than the foundation. He grunted, eyes on the electronic chart, and advised rest, warmth, hydration, the usual quartet of impossible instructions for travelers who sleep in Walmart parking lots.

I tracked down the Wamego Phramacy on Lincoln St. and handed over the scripts. “We can have these for you in 20 minutes,” said the clerk. She asked for a local address. I gave the license plate number of the van. I tried to explain. No dice. I relented and supplied my home address. She typed it without a blink—Wamego must see its share of highway nomads—and handed me a brown bag of pills labeled with warnings: May cause drowsiness. Take with food. I bought beef jerky and an orange to count as food.

I swallowed the first antibiotic with a gulp of orange juice and climbed behind the wheel. Engine settled into a patient thrum, as though mocking my earlier despair. Body still ached; but the mechanical crisis, at least, had bent its knee.

8 The Motel of Necessary Surrender

It would have been folly to chase more miles. I surrendered. I fired up the GPS and headed back to Dave’s driveway to hunker down for the night. I unfolded Josie’s bunk and hit the sack still fully dressed; the thin mattress sagged like topsoil in a spring flood.

Outside, Kansas wind combed the prairie grass westward. In endured a fitful start/stop sleep pattern over the next twelve hours, rising only to swallow pills by phone glow.

9   Shade Tree Alchemy

I’d been hunkered down in the driveway of the Dave Cook family going on a couple of days. Trying to get both myself and Josie healthy again.

Because I couldn’t exactly be going out and meeting people—my voice alone would’ve  scared a small child—I decided to just ride whatever viral demons rested in my bloodstream. The doc had given no definitive diagnosis; probably bronchitis of some kind, hence the antibiotics and antihistamines.

I then turned to Josie and Dave’s expert assistance. We were trying to nail down why she would intermittently “buck” on me.

Dave suggested perhaps the coil was breaking down when heated to maximum temperature. To simulate actual road conditions, Dave grabbed a heat gun and we pummeled the coil from close range. A quick check with a voltmeter showed the coil putting out less juice than it should have. We stopped at a local auto parts store, bought a new coil and installed it. 

Then we went to check the dwell angle of the points inside the distributor; the points control the timing of the spark sent to the plugs. The dwell was well out of spec, and we readjusted. At some point I thought to pull the coil wire out of the distributor cap, and when I did, I was shocked.

The firing end of the coil was completely, utterly corroded. As was the hole in the distributor that it plugged into. It was a wonder how it was generating any spark at all. I then pulled the spark plug wires, and three of the four were also corroded. 

So we went and bought a new distributor cap and installed that after we cleaned all the wires up.

Finally, we retimed the engine because we had messed with the dwell. Whew.

Sad to say, further on down the road, the problem remained; she still bucked at me a few times, but only after I’d driven her hard for four hours straight. The search continued.

10 Dusty Morning Resolutions

Two dawns later I could swallow without knives dancing in my throat. Cough had dropped an octave from gravel to sand. The fever receded like creek water after a storm, leaving debris: rubbery legs and a head stuffed with cotton, but nothing I couldn’t drive through.

Josie started crisp. I turned her nose south on Highway 50, bound for the Oklahoma line. Outside the window winter wheat shimmered hopeful green across plowed rectangles of earth. Somewhere behind, Marshall’s kindergarten greeted Monday with a yawn and a grandmother. I pictured Gloria smoothing a child’s cowlick, and a fresh dose of strength bloomed under the healing ribs.

11 Lessons from the Slow Lane

Illness on the road is a peculiar tutor. It strips the nickel-plated romance from travel and makes you count actual costs: the weight of loneliness, the gamble of trusting eighty-thousand-mile spark plug wires, the humiliation of coughing in a crowded pharmacy line with strangers stepping back. Yet it also clarifies the marrow of adventure: forward motion in spite of hesitation, improvisation in spite of ignorance, gratitude stitched to every narrow escape.

Somewhere near Arkansas City, where the Flint Hills fall away into wide cattle flat, I realized Josie’s brief mutiny and my own viral uprising were twin reminders: partnership is fragile. Machines and flesh share one commandment—maintain or perish. Ignorance is no plea when a vacuum hose whispers of rot; arrogance is no cure when the lungs complain of neglect.

But partnership, once mended, may prove stronger at the splice than at the original weave. I pressed the accelerator. Josie rose to the call, steady as a sermon. My breath did not hitch; the cough waited, patient but defeated.

The road ahead curved south into winter’s promise—Arkansas pine smoke, Mississippi river fog, Georgia red clay, and finally the sandy loam of home. Christmas lights would be twinkling on the porch by the time I crossed the state line. Brenda would ask how the journey went, and I would tell her the short version first—storms and saints, van trouble and coughing nights—but save the longer gospel for later: the gospel of limping on, of accepting days when freedom tastes of cough syrup and tire rubber, of learning—again—that the hardest miles are not thieves of joy but their forges.

Above the low roar of tires on asphalt, I heard the echo of ancient Sunday School sessions: Jesus loves me, this I know. Whether a man sings the words or not, the melody works on him all the same—softening the metal, loosening the rust, urging both pilgrim and machine a few more miles down the calendar toward the next hard lesson and the next unearned mercy.

I settled deeper into the seat. Josie hummed. The land stretched wide and wind-scoured, ready to test us again. I let myself rest, let Josie rest. This journey is serving up different rhythms than I’d anticipated. This wasn't the plan, but perhaps what I needed.

So together we pressed on—the van, the fever-faded driver, and the quiet knowledge that the road, like grace, makes room for those who limp.