Fighting a Run-Down Feeling

Several times since I have moved to La Quinta, I have left a car door open, hence the interior light on, and gone out the next morning to a dead battery. This is because the door from the garage into the house closes smartly against the back of my Achilles’ tendon, causing me to run to a chair and sit down and grasp my ankle. This makes me forget that I have left the car door ajar. Thus, the battery sinks slowly into silence.

But my friend Walt Wagner put one of those trip things at the bottom of the door, which flops down and grips the floor, holding the door open. So I don’t know what happened to the battery yesterday morning except that it is basically a Pasadena battery, and the sand and the heat have given it a poor attitude.

I called the Automobile Club of Southern California and asked if they’d send someone to cope. I was all ready to go to a ladies’ luncheon, which is something I don’t usually do.

This one, however, I wanted to attend because it was to include a daylong seminar by the respected and entertaining antique authority Gwen Znerold, and my hostess was a new friend.

I showered, dressed, went to the car and heard that terrible silence that means the desert demons had struck again.

After half an hour or so, I heard the heartening sound of a repair truck and I ran to greet its driver. He put those things that look like curling irons on my battery and pushed the other end of the cord into a connection at the end of his bumper. In a few minutes, he started the car.

He told me somberly that my destination was not far enough away to charge the battery and that I should have it checked and maybe buy a new one as the expired one was the original and had outlived its expected life.

Then, as he drove away, Jim, the handyman for Laguna de la Paz, appeared. A visit from Jim is like Easter Bunny and Santa Claus arriving at the same time. He can fix anything.

For a number of weeks, I have had several annoyances about the house. Neither basin in the master bath would hold water. There was a furrow in the front lawn where some fun-loving workman had driven and my front-porch light was smashed.

I certainly did not want to send Jim away, so I welcomed him and he fixed everything but the porch light.

By now, two hours had gone by and the ladies were at the designated country club learning about antique glass and I was just getting into the car.

I went to Indio, the hard-working town farther down the valley, and found the service station from which the Auto Club man had been dispatched.

After several false starts, I managed to get a man who would listen to my request to check my battery. He wheeled out a machine that looked like an old-time radio. I kept expecting him to look at me with wonder like Uncle Charlie, who used to say, “Shush. I think I got Denver.”

I had known from that moment when the Auto Club man said I would have to have the battery checked that I would be buying a new battery.

After half an hour in the heat, I said, “Why don’t you just give me a new battery?”

With that, he took the curling irons off and put a new battery in for the customary $80.06.

I arrived at the lecture just as they broke for lunch. So I can’t tell you about the mysteries of antique glass. But I can tell you about dying and dead batteries. The new one is no-maintenance. So was the other one.