Postcards from the Funny Farm

This is my “creepy” story for Shelly over at this Eclectic Life. She was very kind this past month to ask me to judge her “scared silly” writing contest. This is sort of my “entry” after the fact since I already picked a winner. You can find the list of all the entries in the footer of this post. Anyway, as far as my story goes: I hope it comes across as well as it does when I tell it live. I have many stories from my youth but this one absolutely takes the cake because it is so “ethereal” yet 100% real as well. Rest assured, the following story indeed happened and I have run it through my mind ever since trying to make sense of it on a purely scientific level: maybe you can, I’d be very grateful.

I was 12 years old and my 3 younger siblings were all riding in the back of a brown Oldsmobile station wagon, both my parents were up front. We were driving back in a scorching summer from my great grandparents’ house in Apache Junction, Arizona. Normally the drive from there to Southern California, where we resided and all still do, is a painted masterpiece to enjoy as you make the hours of driving. Today it wasn’t like that because the car was having severe issues. We had pulled over twice to let the car cool off since it was overheating. It was a stretch for miles that presented no gas stations and rarely did a car pass up by. That’s how the scenic route is. When the car overheated a third time, my dad told us all to get out and walk.

We waved our hands at passing cars hoping to get some help. No help came. Finally after what seemed like the whole day, a tow truck pulled up and a guy got out who looked like someone out of Deliverance inly less attractive. His name on his makeshift uniform read: “Butch.” I’ll always remember how that man looked. It felt scary at that moment for me, though my mom and dad seems to feel as if they’d won the lottery.

Butch towed us up the hill to his service station. That’s actually too nice of a name to call it. There was a half-destroyed Exxon sign that was fastened to a set of thin trees with bungee cables. My brother and I bolted out of the car (he carried us all in the car as he towed it which was kind of cool) and ran into what seemed like a bathroom. Inside there were busted up condom machines and leaking water all over the place. It wasn’t even a bathroom, it looked more like a post-nuclear film for the government. We went back to our parents to find an unsettling sight.

Butch was yelling at my mom and dad, telling them the car was fixed and he needed $1200 dollars from them. This was circa 1983 so there were no cell phones and in fact Butch said he didn’t have a phone. I remember the frightening next sentence that Butch said to my parents as I watched a three legged dog hobble into the rest room we had just exited: “Well you’re gonna have to get it cash. I will keep one of your kids while you go into town and get it.” The air stood still. My dad is a very calm man and I have rarely seen him lose it, but he was about there with this man. My Dad then decided to get the family into the car. Butch said, “Don’t try leaving. You owe me.”

In the car my dad, being a Christian men’s group leader, said we should all hold hands and pray. My dad prayed a prayer that really seemed to calm my two sisters who were crying down and it actually made me feel at peace as well. I don’t think you can imagine how good it was to feel peace in that situation for the oldest of 4 kids who felt totally helpless.

Soon after the “amen” a white valiant pulled into the gas side. Since no one had come by the whole time, my dad said “son. come with me” and we bolted over to this car. It looked like a family out of the 1950’s. Two boys with braces and headgear and perfect flat-tops. The mom was primping her hair and the dad looked nerd central. My dad explained our situation to the other dad and he nodded as if he knew it already. He explained that they had been praying as a family in the last town and the mom said she just felt like they should get more cash. So they had the cash we needed.

My dad wrote him a personal check for the $1200. The other dad gave him the cash and we paid Butch.

The car wasn’t even remotely fixed and we broke down again later but eventually by a string of events, made it home. I remember being so tired when I hit my bed that night.

To close this up, I know there are many ways to explain this creepy yet victorious story of my family driving across the desert … but you haven’t heard it all. When the check was never cashed my dad tried to get a hold of the man and his family through the contact info they had given him … turned out the phone and address never existed.

Thanks for reading my story. Like I said, it happened to me and I don’t think I could ever make up something that good. It’s hard to get my mind around that story without believing it was supernatural.

Have you ever seen something you thought was supernatural?

Here are the other stories in the contest, they are all amazing:

THE ENTRIES:

• KatelynJane’s Notebook Scared Silly
• SusieJ entered Definitely something foul going on over there…from her archives.
• Crystal at Song Of My Soul entered from her archives “Hey, at least I can laugh at myself, right?”
• Marcia, at Tumbled Words entered “The mask, three prompts combined.”
• Jessica at Life As I See It entered a post from her archives, “It’s Here.”
• Penelope At Cafe at the End of the Universe wrote “The Bathtub Below.”
• Cyn at Rage Against The Cliche entered “The Tears of the Phoenix.”
• Robin at Around The Island posted “Treed, or rather staircased.”
• Amy Palko at Lives Less Ordinary added “Scare Silly By The Fairies.”
• Cindee at CiNdEe’s GaRdEn entered “How I Scared My Daughter Silly.”
• The Wandering Author wrote “Wake Up, Little Susie.”

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