Now, I was a trained professional, and had handled my fair share of medical and mechanical emergencies in my day, but when the wheels started coming off of our little wagon in south-central Iowa, I did a poor job indeed of keeping myself together.
Smoke was billowing out from under the hood, and on the crystal-clearest of all crystal clear Iowa summer days, visibility was about two inches. The car was lurching and sputtering like a jalopy falling apart in an old cartoon, and Thumper was sweating through his shirt, which was the first time he’d evinced so much as a bead all day. He was just trying to keep the car in its lane, concentrating on keeping it moving forward long enough to get it off the highway, and my hysterical screams of “Keep going! For God’s sake, keep driving!” may have be
