2001, early March I think.  Me and my 1991 Geo Storm hatchback are screaming down I-35 somewhere north of DesMoines.  I loved that car.  She was my first and will always hold a special place in my heart.  Five speed, four cylinder, had some pickup when I needed it.  Reeked of pizza and cigarettes and the back seat was pretty well full of one-liter Mountain Dew bottles.  She had pop-up headlights, which had been a preoccupation of mine since the age of four, and that awesome purple stick-on tinting on the back windows.  The little piece of plastic that was supposed to say ‘Storm’ was broken and it read ‘orm.’  Sort of.  I had just put new tires on, and while I didn’t know it at the time, in my life that means the car doesn’t have much longer for this world.  I was blissfully unaware that the end of my two-year tour in the St. Paul pizza business was drawing to a sudden close.  

The Orm had some minor mechanical problems, nothing serious.  Slow leak in the coolant line, occasional muffler issues.  Ten-year-old car owned by a kid that can’t afford routine maintenance kinda stuff.  So there we are, me and my car, somewhere in northern Iowa.  Slow guy in the left lane.  Hate that guy.  Don’t even bother to downshift.  Hammer down to pass him.  Nothing.  Hmm.  Downshift and stomp on the gas.  Still nothing.  Uh oh.  UH OH.  Thermostat buried in the red.  Coasting.  Praying for an exit with some kind of civilization.  And there it is, Story City, Iowa.

I coasted up the exit ramp and hit the brakes just before I actually started to roll backwards.  Those ramps are a lot longer on foot than in a car.  Gas station at the top.  Pay phone.  Where am I?  Oh yeah, Story City.  Thank God for Triple A.  I don’t remember his name, but I will never forget his kindness.  Came and towed my beloved Orm back to his garage.  I knew I was in trouble.  My limited income depended on that car.  I was making a living, but barely.  I surely didn’t have enough savings to fix it, or buy a new one.  I had been fiercely independent since I headed off to college and subsequently dropped out.  I somehow managed to use the guy’s phone to call my girlfriend, or maybe one of her coaches.  I had been en route to her mock trial tournament in DesMoines.  Her coaches were lawyers and probably had cell phones, but I didn’t.  That must have been when I could still remember phone numbers.

Eventually I got the verdict.  It was bad.  Remember that slow leak in the coolant line?  I hadn’t.  Turns out my engine got so hot that the pistons fused to the cylinders.  That’s really hot.  It also means that the engine is shot.  “I can drop a new engine in ‘er for eight hundred and fifty bucks.”  Dammit.

So I made the trip to Dad.  I had been enjoying, in a prideful sort of way, that I was living without a financial safety net at the age of nineteen and twenty.  I was on my own and anything I had, I had earned.  His offer: “Your step-mom and I will loan you the eight fifty, interest free, ten month term.  IF, you get a real job.”  Read: stop delivering pizzas.  “OR, we will give you a grand if you enlist.”  Hmm.  Interesting.  Dad had done some research and it was an intriguing offer.  I had come out of high school with a full ride Army ROTC scholarship but I lost that when I dropped out.  The Army had always been appealing, the college money was good and I wanted to go back.  It was 2001, the world was at peace.  It was the reserves for God’s sake.  And so I did.