For Tarzan of the Freeway, It’s a Jungle Out There
In the automotive jungle, Jeff Johnson plays Tarzan.
He rescues stranded travelers and revives the four-wheeled beasts they ride. Instead of swinging to the rescue from trees, he swings off the high seat of the tow truck in which he roams the concrete paths of the western San Fernando Valley.
“Most of the people I meet are in a rotten mood,” said Johnson, 31, who has handled trouble calls in the Valley for the Automobile Club of Southern California on and off since 1974. “They become withdrawn or really angry. A lot of them get panicked, especially on the freeway. I’ve had ladies who were crying. I’ve had men who got shook up.”
There were no crying women or shaking men on a recent day with Johnson, but neither was there a shortage of anger and frustration during nine hours that offered encounters with the vehicular miseries that motorists endure.
The scenes unfold daily in parking lots, along freeway shoulders, in the middle of boulevard lanes and in the garages of homes on hillsides and condominium complexes down below. From decrepit Chevrolets to shimmering Cadillacs, Johnson traverses the car castes, ministering to annoyances that ignore status.
Disconsolate Driver
While jump-starting an $80,000 Ferrari in an Encino garage as its owner puffed disconsolately on a pipe behind the wheel, Johnson informed him: “I’m sorry, sir, but you have another little problem. That alternator is going bad.”
Winnetka Avenue on the west, Encino Avenue on the east, Oxnard Street on the north and Mulholland Drive on the south--these are the boundaries of Johnson’s territory. His responsibilities include the Ventura Freeway, the busiest in the nation.
His truck bears the round, blue logo of the Auto Club, and he is based at the Armour Chevron station in Tarzana, one of 40 stations in the Valley that contract with the Auto Club for vehicle service. Other tow truck drivers say Johnson’s experiences typify theirs, including the dangers of often working close to the flow of cars on the freeway.
C. W. Morris, president of the California Tow Truck Assn., whose 450 members are towing companies and service stations around the state, said a year rarely goes by without the death of at least one tow truck driver on a Los Angeles freeway. He said customers of theirs also have been killed. The Ventura Freeway, Morris said, is one of the most dangerous for a driver working outside his truck because the “shoulder is very narrow in many places.”
Johnson, an aspiring pastry chef who dreams of soon opening a bakery, said he is looking forward to putting tow truck driving behind him.
Dislocated Big Toe
“I’ve almost been hit up on the freeway a few times,” he said. “I’ve had batteries blow up in my face--one shattered my glasses. A lady drove over my foot while I was underneath her hood checking the transmission, and it dislocated my big toe on my right foot.”
Johnson’s world is mostly that of the simple breakdown. He generally doesn’t cope with anything more gruesome than a fender-bender. Usually, he sticks to expired batteries, blowouts, lockouts, rebellious starters and empty fuel tanks.
Colleagues at Armour, taking into consideration his cooking skills, call Johnson “The Pillsbury Dough Boy,” and, though Johnson is thin, it’s a description that captures a perpetually chipper disposition.
Between assignments, transmitted to him on a two-way radio from an Auto Club office on Kester Avenue near Vanowen Street, Johnson commented on the escalating challenge of contemporary driving.
“People can’t change their own tires anymore,” he said, explaining that most shops tighten lug nuts so firmly with pneumatic wrenches that the average driver can’t loosen them. Johnson said that has increased the number of calls he has responded to to fix flats. The pneumatic wrenches have also made it difficult for a roadside Popeye to come to the aid of a stranded Olive Oyl.
For example, at one of his stops, Johnson found a pretty blonde textbook editor gazing unhappily at a shredded tire.
Couldn’t Loosen a Nut
Looking still unhappier, a young man stood by the curb, having given up his effort to help her. Try as he might, he couldn’t loosen a single lug nut.
As the more experienced Johnson used a plain wrench to succeed at the same task, the young man commented, “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.”
The increasing use of sophisticated electronics in newer cars has also made the tow truck driver’s job harder these days.
“In the past, we were a lot more able to fix cars at the side of the road than we can now,” Johnson said. “The reason is that the cars have so many computers and such sophisticated electronics that you have to be some kind of computer expert to figure them out. Now, a lot of the time, to make a part work again, you have to replace it.”
He said he is still able to get about half of his callers back on the road again right away, with the help of jumper cables, a spare tire or a quick fix under the hood. The other half have the kind of trouble that requires towing, he said.
“A lot of people don’t have enough general knowledge about their automobiles,” Johnson complained, hitting a frequent theme in his monologue. “What does not revolve around the automobile? But knowing about cars doesn’t seem important to people until they break down.”
First of 25 Motorists
Robert Dunnell, the first of the 25 motorists Johnson assisted one day recently, didn’t want to be educated on how to fix cars.
When Johnson found him, Dunnell was hovering over his ailing Fiat on Ventura Boulevard, just west of Vanalden Avenue.
It was Monday morning. He was glum and silent and late for work at 8:10. He was also out of gas, so Johnson gave him gas from a can that he carries. Still, no start. His fuel pump, Johnson declared, was malfunctioning.
When Dunnell was asked what job he was late for, he mumbled.
Asked to please speak a little louder, he cleared his throat. “This is pretty embarrassing. I fix cars for a living,” he said. “A mechanic.”
And how could this have happened to him?
“You know what they say about the cobbler’s family going without shoes? Well, I guess that’s it.”
Ducked Under Hood
He turned down an offer of a tow, and as Johnson pulled away, ducked under the hood of his car. “That’s one I don’t think I’ve ever gotten before,” Johnson said. “A mechanic!”
But the rest of the day was crammed with cases of the sort that Johnson is used to. He took 25 calls between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. that day.
Six people had locked themselves out of their cars, six had dead batteries, seven had flat tires and six had cars with engine trouble and required towing. It was, Johnson said, a typical variety.
A number of highly coveted cars, Mercedes-Benzes, Cadillacs and Ferraris, had problems.
The day with Johnson yielded a journalistic constant: People who have locked their keys in their cars generally do not want their pictures taken. Another predictable detail was that nearly all of them greet a tow truck driver with the words, “I’ve never done this before.”
On this day there were no examples of the worst kinds of lockouts Johnson said he gets--babies inside, mothers outside.
On this day, there was one case in which a mother and a baby were both locked out of an car at an Encino parking lot. The keys were on the front seat.
Johnson slipped a long metal prong, which he always carries, between the driver’s side window and door to jimmy the lock open. He poked and pulled for about five minutes before the lock released.
“I guess I’ve got a lot on my mind,” said Vicki Wolf, the mother, standing beside her daughter, Carly, 21 months. “I locked the doors and after I was out I looked in and saw the keys. My heart sank. I’ve never done this before.”
Really?
“Really. It’s always been a nightmare of mine.”
“Don’t worry,” Johnson said as he climbed back behind the wheel of his truck. “It’s everybody’s, and it happens all the time.”
