I was sitting in my living room when the phone rang. It was an unfamiliar female voice, which was surprising to my ears.

"Your friend asked me to call and tell you that his car is broke down," said the benevolent voice. "I don't know his name, but he is on Macedonia Church Road."

At first I didn't say anything; my mind was busy processing the information the caller had given me. I knew the friend was a man and this woman was not a friend that I recognized. "Are you there?" The caller asked.

"Where are you and where is he on Macedonia Church Road?" I queried.

"We stopped at the store to call, we just passed him on the road a few miles back. I'm not too familiar with the area. He told me to tell you that he is near Bill Duncan's house."

"Are you sure it's Macedonia Church Road? Bill Duncan's dairy is on Chestnut Grove Church Road," I noted.

"I don't know," came the reply.

I thanked the caller and got up from my comfortable chair to slip on a pair of tennis shoes. It was Friday evening and a friend from Wilkes County had just left the house, leading me to wonder if he was the one broken down. We split a fourth of a beef, which he was hauling in coolers in the trunk of his car. It wouldn't be good to be stuck on the side of the road with a trunk load of meat and temperatures in the 80s.

Then it registered, you can't get there from here. There is no reason why he would have been on that road to get home from my house. Besides, he wouldn't be out dilly-dallying with a trunk full of meat.

So I got in my car and headed out, traveling up Grandview toward Pine Swamp, where I crossed over to Macedonia Church Road.

Using my cell phone, I called another friend. After explaining the situation, I asked, "Did Bill Duncan build a house on Macedonia Church Road?"

The reply firmed up my earlier thought, he lived on the other side of U.S. 21 on Chestnut Grove Church Road. "You must be a good friend to head out and help someone when you don't even know who it is."

I explained that it must be someone I know well or they wouldn't be spending their one chance on a call for help by ringing my phone.

I should note here that I don't personally know Bill Duncan, but dairies in this county are getting to be landmarks. Besides, I was at that farm awhile back when he let the kids fish in his pond for a 4-H outing.

After stopping by the store, just in case, I crossed over U.S. 21 and headed down Chestnut Grove, soon seeing my friend's little car on the side of the road with the hazard lights flashing. It was not the fellow who headed out for Wilkes. It was another good friend from Sparta. I was glad that I went ahead and headed out when I got the call.

We soon had the car rolled back down the hill to the dairy and asked Mr. Duncan if it could stay there. My friend knows him pretty well. After that, I took my friend home and agreed to help him the next day if he could get it running. He tried a fuel filter and several other options the next morning, but was unable to get it going. I drove out to check on him and agreed to help load it on a tow dolly to take it to his house.

He rented one in town and we went down to load it up. Nothing worked right from that point forward.

Once we had it lined up and the ramps pulled out of the dolly, we tried to push the little car up the ramps, but soon realized that wouldn't be possible. After that, we decided to use a come-along to pull it up.

After attaching a chain under the car, we hooked up the come-along to the truck bumper and started moving it forward. About halfway up the ramp, the dolly popped off the ball on the truck and nearly beaned me in the head. So, it was down with the car to release the pressure and then back on the bumper with the dolly hitch.

Then we hooked the come-along to a bracket on the dolly, which was working great, at least until we realized the chain was too long and we were running out of room to lift. The car was only about halfway up and the capacity of the come-along had nearly ended.

So, it was back down the ramp again to get another bite. The come-along wasn't exactly the best piece of equipment I've ever worked with. The handle would easily bend if any pressure was applied to the side and I was constantly worried that it might give way.

This time, we were only about one inch from where we needed to be when we ran out of chain. We used a rope to secure the car and then loosened the come-along once more for a final pull. By this time, the hot sun was making sweat drip into my eyes as I took my turn with the handle, raising the car one click at a time until it made it to the indentions for the wheels.

After tightening it down, we headed for his house. However, on the way, he decided to take it to the garage instead. "If I can't fix it, I'll still have to move it again. This way, it will be in the right place to start with," he said.

That sounded logical to me. Once we got there, we came up with a new problem: how to unload the car?

After we once again failed to budge it by pushing it off the trailer, I came up with a strategy. We could hook a rope to a tree and then pull the truck forward slowly and the car would roll free. We soon realized that we didn't have place to hook the rope, so we lifted the car's hatch and tied the rope around the bumper. No one thought to close the hatch.

As I eased up with the truck, the car suddenly came off the ramps with much more acceleration than I thought possible. It was then, as I watched it roll backwards, that I understood that the car was still in neutral.

I watched in the mirror as the car jumped the small curb and came to rest against a tree with a small crunch. As I walked back, I saw that the hatch was bent down slightly. We pulled the car back away from the tree and secured the hatch with a piece of twine. I was glad that the glass wasn't broken, but the latch wouldn't connect as the hatch closed. There was also a half-moon dent in the bottom of the hatch as well. "Maybe we should have called a wrecker," I offered.

"It looks like I did," he said.

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