A Tale of Two Vans
Ben Proctor
Our journey to New York City in May of 2008 started with my friend Anna's 1995 Mercury with one hundred seventy thousand miles. You may see the shortsightedness of piling four guys and a bunch of instruments and gear into such a volatile vehicle, but we were seduced by the prospect of saving a hundred bucks on gas (at four dollars a gallon).
We put as much stuff as we needed for our brief three-day tour of New York City into Anna’s van and took off.
In the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania on highway 81, we heard a bang, then geng geng geng geng geng, ssssssss, and the cabin filled with smoke and steam. I shut off the engine and pulled off to the side of the road.
Some brown sludge had spurted from the engine block and all the electric power in the van was dead. We called AAA. A state trooper pulled over, and as luck would have it, he was a huge bluegrass fan. He gave two of us a ride to the mechanic and spent the next hour helping us locate a rental van.
Anna’s van had taken its last ride, and would be left for parts. (Sorry, Anna!)
After an hour on the phone with various companies, we finally found a van to rent right outside Scranton. GP and I took a cab to Scranton and drove the rental van back to the mechanic’s.
We didn’t have a whole lot of time to make our gig in New York, so we threw all of our stuff into the new van and hit the road.
It was beginning to get dark as we got into New Jersey.
Approaching New York, it was dark. Our start time for the gig at Jalopy wasn’t until 10:30, and we looking for parking in Brooklyn just as the opening band was beginning their set.
At Jalopy in Brooklyn, there was square dancing! Our friends in New York came with some Chinese food, a great blessing since we hadn’t eaten since we left from Rochester that morning.
The Varnish Cooks were on time and had a great show at Jalopy.
