Solomon’s Gift 4-22-10

Connellsville, Pennsylvania

When asked what one single gift he would most treasure in the world, King Solomon asked for wisdom, not a plasma screen TV, not a palm pilot, not even an unlimited free line of credit at Circuit City or Best Buy. He simply wanted to know how to judge information and to act appropriately on those things he learned and was told. He wanted to live his life well. You might say he wanted to live Christmas all year long.

Today in early spring the Magi appeared again to give me knowledge and wisdom that would save me from certain death. I was suddenly put in the same league as Solomon, even if for but a short season, yet long enough to keep from dying in the mountains. Wisdom is certainly a gift that keeps on giving. As Solomon said, “seek this one with all your heart”. It might just save your life.

In my travels I’ve often been disquieted by seeing impossibly steep truck escape ramps constructed for that frightening possibility of brake failure in eighteen-wheelers traversing steep mountain passes. Some of these ramps look like they were designed by civil engineers who hate their jobs, insuring tractor–trailer rigs achieve maximum altitude just before plunging into a high mountain abyss. I’ve often wondered what the terror would be like for a truck driver in the mountains finding himself sucked into this steep uncertainty following a brake failure

Being of the attitude that getting there is just as important as being there, I often take slow back roads to places, avoiding Interstates filled with everyone else in a big hurry. So it today I was on the Blue Ridge Parkway rather than several oppressively frenetic interstates, taking Joanne to Pennsylvania for one of her semi-annual family pilgrimages. The Blue Ridge Parkway must be one of the most beautiful roads in the world, if you have good brakes and a reliable vehicle.

The region of the Parkway east of Asheville on which I found myself this morning is the highest public road in eastern North America. I was at nearly 6,000 feet, near Mount Mitchell, occasionally stopping to take picture of incredible vistas and to have small bits of conversation with other sojourners gawking at the same wondrous views. It was up this serpentine pathway to heaven that I first smelled it, that distinctive odor that comes from nothing in the world but burning brake pads.

Having always had an intellectual disdain for people foolish enough to ride their brakes in the mountains rather than using their gears and downshifting, letting the engine do the work of fighting gravity, I have always been compulsive about avoiding the use of brakes in the mountains, especially when any kind of equilibrium is some thousands of feet straight down, inches from my right tire. I happily figured the whiff of burning asbestos was from someone else flirting with death, not me. I knew better that to flirt unnecessarily with the grim reaper. I refocused on the wondrous emerald realm around me. Anyway, Joanne doesn’t like it when I focus on the dark side of life on the third planet.

Again, moments later, my nostrils caught the distinctive aroma. Both feet were well away from the brake pedals. No one else was on the road. Perhaps the odor was just hanging in the very still air from a now-invisible car. The odor seemed to go away. Denial can be an effective life coping skill, or so we like to think

Sometimes ignorance of the future is truly a gift. Ignorance can be sweet bliss. Yet, as always, denial provides only a deferral of interest charges, and eventually one will have to pay back. Yet payback can be wondrous. Once in a while the debt is forgiven. And so it was for me today.

For some five miles, driving across the sky, I thought that ominous odor merely a fading reminder of the inferiority of those who didn’t know better about mountain driving. They had asked for TVs rather than knowledge or common sense. And then it recurred. Sniff. Denial was starting to fray around the edges, especially up in this very thin atmosphere. And then the clincher. Joanne said, “I need to go to the bathroom.” Guys behind the wheel know the world comes to a halt at that statement.

Divine providence is an amazing thing. Those who have traveled the Parkway know bathrooms are not a dime a dozen. It may be fifty very circuitous miles or more between them. As Joanne was uttering those words every driving man dreads hearing, a ranger station/gift shop came into view. I knew it would have toilets. I didn’t know it would have Magi, or that I would even need one.

After pulling in, I put my hand down on the left front wheel – warm but not too hot. Good. It was another idiot after all. I went around the passenger side to get Joanne out and saw about five tendrils of blue and gray smoke wafting up into the rarified atmosphere of the Blue Ridge from the front right wheel. You already know exactly what that smoke smelled like. The machined wheel was so hot it had turned blue. For those of you that don’t know, when an ironsmith is working metal to make it really strong, he anneals it by getting it really hot in a stoked furnace and then dumping it into cold water. It turns blue. I knew if I put my hand on that wheel it was going to be medium-well done at a minimum when I pulled it back. I suddenly had that same kind of feeling one has when a doctor says, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this.”

Moving slowly, no longer wondering about the magic of rhododendron and mountain laurel in the Blue Ridge, I wandered into the shop wondering how many days it was going to take and how much it was going to cost to get down off the mountain and to Pennsylvania. Inside, I asked if anyone had any mechanical inclinations. The young woman inside immediately denied having any but said she would ask the guy in the back room. I thought only car dealers had back rooms. He came out and denied any knowledge of such things but suggested it might be a good idea to take a bucket of cold mountain water and dump it on that smoking wheel.

Mechanically gifted readers will instantly know that’s a fine plan for annealing hot horseshoes, but it’s clearly not the optimum plan for burnt brakes on a heavy van at 6,000 feet. A bucket of cold water on that white-hot metal would have destroyed everything in that region of the van and would have done severe damage of the highest order to my credit card at payback time.

Then it happened, in the emerald mountains at 6,000 feet. The Magi appeared, wearing a brown work shirt. No robes or camels. A fellow in a gray pick-up truck wandered up to the small group watching the last fading tendrils of blue-gray ascend towards Heaven. He gave the gift that keeps on giving – wisdom. Still uncertain if I was watching brake fluid burning from a line failure or the burning of the brake pads, he suggested that the brake caliper may well have failed and seized. He then offered a pearl of knowledge, unknown to my vast experience. “Drive the van backwards and hit the brakes fairly hard. Do this several times. It might make the caliper release, if this is indeed the problem.” I knew nothing about brake calipers seizing.

With the most inspiring tool in the van being a pair of toe-nail clippers and having visions of the nearest tow truck being 255 miles away, I gave it a try. Something told me this guy came from a reliable Source. What did I have to lose but my life? I am certain the other high-altitude souvenir buyers in the parking lot must have thought I was short on fluids myself or experiencing altitude sickness.

The Magi provided me with another essential piece of information about an unknown land. Eight miles along the Parkway was an exit and just outside that exit was a Wal-Mart super center with a garage and three miles further on was a Ford dealership. Here? How could there be a Wal-Mart here on the highest place in Eastern North America? There wasn’t. I asked what those eight miles of Parkway were like. “All downhill.” How could it be otherwise? I was already at the highest place on this part of the planet.

God protects the foolhardy. Joanne has already faced down death once and won. She was game. After my little reverse display in the parking lot for the tourists I crept forward, hazard lights on, not knowing if the brake had released, if there was any brake fluid anywhere in the system, or if I had any brakes other than the parking brake. For forty five minutes as I descended those “all-downhill” miles from the high place where Magi come to earth, my blood pressure ascended. No talking, no radio. Using the engine and the gears, we traversed those eight miles at breath-taking speeds approaching seventeen miles an hour. The only talking allowed was my indicating success at another mile descended.

At about mile six, I had the horrid realization that Blue Ridge Parkway exits tend to be tight little clover leafs with stop signs leading onto often-busy state roads. I was already far into the coast of a life-time so could only hope that the specified exit might be a little more forgiving than most. As it turns out, this exit was newly reconstructed and led into a huge very busy four lane state road. I had no idea if I had any brakes whatever. As it was the Magi must have called ahead. I was able to coast around the wide exit ramp and roll the stop sign, having been given a clear view of the highway and seeing a long gap in the traffic. I found myself on a four-lane road, going up a very slight incline with a Wal-Mart super center in front of me. This was better than gold, frankincense and myrrh any day of the week, or eternity for that matter.

The Magi must have called one of his buds. All the while in that time-altering descent, during forty-five minutes that seemed like forever, a very large white pick-up truck appeared on the Parkway and held way back to give me space for a survivable descent. Most people want to get to the next place. Magi are patient with those limping along in life. He even held back and followed me around that exit ramp and rolled the stop sign with me. At the Wal-Mart, seeing I was safely down to 5 mph limping to the garage, he went on to another High Place. I never knew a Wal-Mart could look better than 6,000-foot vistas of oceans of cloud in mountain valleys. Standing on still ground at the garage, the fellow there said, “We don’t do brakes.” He then said, “There’s a Ford dealership three miles ‘up’ the road. ‘Up’ sounded infinitely better than ‘down’.

Gravity was gentle and we made it the three miles to the Ford dealership along that very busy highway filled with every logging truck and eighteen wheeler in the region. The service garage had a large sign on the door, which stated, “No appointments necessary.” The Magi was right. The caliper was destroyed after its piston had failed, and the Magi’s trick had allowed it to release so I could descend a total of eleven miles without immolating the front end of the van. The wheel was stone cold when I got back down to earth. And He provided a place without an appointment.

No Christmas dinner has anything on the picnic lunch we ate in that Ford showroom while we waited three hours for the burnt brakes to be replaced. The price was right and the people were unusually friendly.