I talk a lot about Barbara, in my
writing, but I seldom mention Bonnie. And, as you know if you've seen my
book, The Gillums aren't like other people.
Well, Bonnie is not just unlike other people, she's a whole lot
different. She is so different, we just don't treat her like we do
other members of our family. When we go somewhere, and take Bonnie
along, we just normally leave her sitting outside, in the parking
lot. People would just not be understanding if we tried to take
Bonnie inside.
Well, when we got back from church
a while back, something was wrong. Maybe she was upset about us
leaving her outside. Anyway, we knew something was bad wrong with her
when we got home. Bonnie would just not stop chattering. No matter
what we did, she would just not shut up.
We called our friend Skeet.
He knows a lot about Bonnie's type. He has three of his own, who live
with him. In fact, he is so crazy about Bonnie's type, his wife
Willene just has to really stay on top of the situation, or Skeet
would pick up a new one, and bring her home, every time he goes to
town. But Skeet just has a thing about red. He always says, "Red
is the natural color" for those like Bonnie.The most prominent
feature, on all those Skeet takes home, is red.
Well, Skeet and Wilene came over,
and even an experienced man like Skeet couldn't figure out how to
make Bonnie shut up, without hurting her, and we sure didn't want to
do that.
As it happens, we have a friend,
James, who is in charge of a bunch of guys who spend the day, every
day, keeping Bonnie's type healthy. If anyone knew how to shut her
up, he would.
We called him, and as luck would
have it, he just happened to be driving by Arkadelphia on I-30 just
as he got our call. He was soon there.
He took one look at Bonnie, opened
her up, and started pulling things out. We were shocked and
horrified, but it worked. Bonnie didn't say another thing.
He said that we should take her to
this place that specialized in helping the Bonnie's of this world,
first thing Monday.
Then he said he had one other
thing he had to do to her today, to keep her from being all run down
by Monday, but he wasn't really sure where it was located on Bonnie
in particular.
He searched all over her, and
finally, he had to check her rear end. And there it was. Barbara
couldn't stand to watch anymore. He just reached in there and took
the negative cable off, and that did it.
I called Gildner Chevrolet, first
thing Monday, and made an appointment. The service manager said the
warranty would cover it, if she had under 35,000 miles. Well, she was just a few miles short of that. I figured we would just barely make it
there, and I started taking off all the stickers, from that place we
bought her from in Hot Springs, that I could find on Bonnie.
I asked the service manager,
Jeff, if we could park Bonnie right up at the very front of the
garage, and please, don't test drive her until you check the mileage.
Jeff, who just happened to be an
ex-student of mine, just smiled and said, "Don't worry, Mr.
Gillum, I'm going to take GOOD care of you." I was just a little
scared about what he meant by that, and I started running back
through in my mind, trying to remember if I had missed a sticker, and
what grade I had given him in biology. But anyway, its generally
good to have ex-students in powerful places, and it worked out well
this time.
Bonnie only needed, as it turned
out, to have her ignition switch repaired, and Jeff took care of me.
By the way, Barbara named Bonnie,
her cute little HHR car, after Bonnie and Clyde, after someone told
her she resembled their car. ______
Merry Christmas to all my readers all over the world, and thank you for your time, and your attention.
Those two things are very valuable, and finite, more valuable than money. I never lose sight of that.
I will start a new series, next post.
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