I wrote this story down for a writing class assignment, but I cut and pasted this excerpt here and changed the beginning. Hopefully all of the facts have remained the same from the first telling.
While we were in the Czech Republic, we took a family canoe trip along the Vltava River, camping
on the shore at night. Borrowing a Ford Focus from our friend
Eliška's mother, we traveled from where we were staying in Trutnov,
a tiny mountain town, to our destination at the Vltava River. Ivan,
Eliška's mother's boyfriend from Trutnov (as distinct from her
Prague boyfriend), took my parents for a test drive, speaking in
Czech while Eliška interpreted. The Focus was safe, the drivers were
safe, and we drove away, excitedly awaiting our arrival at our
destination about six hours later. Not long into our drive, the
manual Focus stopped shifting down. Eliška called her mother,
telling her that the car would no longer shift into third gear.
Replying in rapid, bubbly Czech, Anna Nováková, announced
nonchalantly that this meant we no longer had first or second gear,
or reverse, for that manner. She then instructed that those driving
should not stop at all, especially not on a hill. Verifying that Anna
knew the effects these actions would have on her clutch, we continued
on our trip to the Vltava at breakneck speed, pedestrians yielding to
American-made car flying through the crosswalk. We arrived safely,
and, digging up our rain gear, carefully put it on before exiting the
smoking vehicle. It was cold. We set up our tents, three of them, one
of which we borrowed from Eliška's father. It had no fly. A puddle
formed on the tent floor shortly after we pitched it, and everyone
under the age of forty piled into one tent that night. Setbacks are
only potential stories. A plan was formed for the retrieval of the
little Ford Focus after we arrived, by canoe, at our destination
Eliška and my father would take a bus back to the place we had
started, somehow manage to restart the car and get it out of the
parking lot without reverse, first or second gear, drive it in fourth
gear to the campsite at Česky
Krumlov, stop briefly to load it, then push it back out of the
parking lot. When the time came, the plan was employed and my father
gunned it up the steep streets. He drove it faithfully through
fairytale fields dotted with the occasional castle, and we used water
sparingly. No stops would be made until we were safely in Trutnov. We
made it to Prague, several hours outside of Trutnov, in rush hour
traffic with the smell of burning clutch wafting through our sinuses.
Then, on the highway through Prague, traffic stood still on a busy
bridge. We were on an incline. Smoke poured from the hood and pulling
over was inevitable. Then and there everyone had to pee. Pulling rain
gear from the nether regions of our backpacks, we prepared for the
thin drizzle that collected on the ground outside and created a stall
with the doors and the guardrail on one side of the highway median. I
went first. You'll never believe it, but as soon as I got back into
the car, it started pouring rain, like heaven's gate had broke open
and all of the angel's bathwater for the past fifteen years gathered
and dropped over the bridge on a highway somewhere in Prague. A
debate ensued. To go, or not to go, that was the question. It was
pouring rain outside, but inside that's all the bladders wanted to
do. One by one, the rest of the family trooped outside and relieved
themselves, men on the grassy green median, women in the makeshift
stall. Until it was Eliška's
turn to go. Eli is one of those people who can only think of one
thing at any given time. She's brilliant. She just graduated from
Charles University with something between a Masters and a Phd in
languages, showing correlations between Czech language and Hebrew
Psalms for her dissertation or something like that. Only one
professor in the entire university was able to understand her studies
to the depth that she took them. She cannot, to save her life, think
through what she's having for dinner and what bus to take in the
morning at the same time. When we were all peeing, she was thinking
through how to get us off of the highway. She had enough battery for
one more call on her old Nokia phone, taped together with packing
tape, and had to choose wisely. She texted different people for
different phone numbers, and had this on the mind when she stepped
into the pouring rain to empty her bladder. Foregoing the stall, she
marched into the middle of the highway, squatted in the middle of
median, and peed. Returning to the car, she picked up the phone, and
continued with her mission. We were amused, but wouldn't have put
something like that past her in a million years. Later we learned
that she was completely unaware of the privacy stall. And why should
she be? She was on a mission. To make a long story shorter, Anna came
to our rescue in an adorable yellow rain jacket, with yellow rain
boots, a yellow umbrella with the Prague boyfriend, Jiři
in tow. The Kaes family got into Jiři's
car while he towed the Ford Focus to Trutnov, depositing it in Ivan's
auto mechanic shop, Ivan standing by. By the time we got back to
Anna's house for some shuteye, we smelled horrendous. Three days on a
river, one six hour car ride, and burning clutch fumes do not make
people smell like roses.
