Did I mention a little snake?

I'll try to be brief, Dear Reader:  The very first evening spent at Hills Creek State Park, the four of us (our friends Tom and Tina, Yard Man and I) went out for a drive to explore the park a bit.   The Yard Man had offered our car, so he was in the driver's seat.  We were circling the lake and admiring it when he rather abruptly decided to steer off the paved road.  He barrelled down onto a tiny beach-like spot beside the water.  Clunk-clunk! Some foreign object contacted with the bottom of the car.   Yikes.  The noise did not sound pleasant or hopeful.   It continued as he backed out and returned the car to the paved road. Something, it seemed,  was drooping or dragging or knocked out of place!

The sun was setting and we were about ready to end the drive, anyway.  As we proceeded back to the cabin, the noise was a bit sporadic.  Sometimes it didn't sound too bad, and then I would think the little snake in Eden might just slither away.   We could ride around in Tom and Tina's car during the rest of our two-night stay and then gently drive our car home and find a garage.

But, then, the scraping, rattly noise would be too awful. "There's no way!" I said to the Yard Man.  "We absolutely can't drive all the way home with this situation!  Tomorrow we'll have to find a garage!"

Find a garage?!  Reader Dear, "googling" might as well have still been a silly, baby word!  And there wasn't even a yellow-paged phone book in that cabin.
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However,  I put the problem out of my mind, along with the past hundred or so years of problems.    Que sera, sera. 

We had a lovely evening in the cabin.

When the sun came up again, it was Sunday morning.  Veteran's Day weekend.  In a tiny mountain town.  The four of us took two cars to the Wellsboro Diner to have breakfast; one of the cars was making an unbearable noise.

Whatever were the odds that we'd actually find a garage to work on that car today?!  Would we have to dedicate a large chunk of this one solitary full day of our two-night stay searching for a fix?

We asked our waitress if she might know of a garage.
She told us she'd ask around back in the kitchen.


Once again, I'll try to keep the story short and sweet.

Sweet:  Hallelujah, at the last minute, just before we left the diner, a waitress who had just arrived to start her shift came to tell us about her brother-in-law.

"He works on cars.  He's got a garage at his house and it's not far away.  I'm sure he's there working right now.  I'll give him a call!"

Sweet: This man was so pleasant and accommodating.  We left our car at his place, rode off with Tom and Tina.  We came back a few hours later; it was fixed*.  The price to repair? Twenty-five dollars.

Short:  I could go on and on about how the serendipity of getting this repair so quickly and easily banished the snake, and even enhanced the day.  But I promised "short."

Ergo, The End!

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*It was an under-body shield of some sort.  Made of plastic.  This car-man reattached it with  some kind of plastic strips.  At last report (months later) still functioning well.  (Wow)