Monday, December 13, 2010

The Burning of Garnet’s Jacket: An addendum to “Perils of driving…”

Claire and Garnet read our last post about breaking down in Argentina, and they reminded us (well Claire did) that we left out one very amusing nuance of the trip: The burning of Garnet’s jacket.  Recall that the semitruck tugged us to the police checkpoint and dropped us off there.  The police checkpoint had a little three-room office for the police to do their paperwork, recover from the cold weather, eat meals, and use the restroom.  It was freezing cold out that night up on the hill, so the police let us wait in the office with them while we tried to figure out what to do.  It’s important to understand this scene from the perspective of the police to get the full humorous impact of the burning of Garnet’s jacket: four gringos, none of whom speaks Spanish, can’t start their car, and so had to get towed to the checkpoint.  The police were convinced that there was nothing wrong with the car and we had just run out of gas or were doing something else wrong. We know this not because we could understand what they were saying, but rather because they later attempted to start it for us about a dozen times and then drove Jynene and myself to the petrol station down the hill. We brought back two containers of gas and emptied them into our car with a long stick and a cut-up coke bottle. To their surprise, but not ours, the car still would not start. Furthermore, Garnet had been on and off the phone with the car rental company and insurance agency, so we hadn’t called a tow truck to take us into town yet, which would have been the most logical course of action for us to take from the perspective of the police. We know this fact as well because one of the police kept handing Jynene the number for the tow truck. In short, we looked like absolute bunglers. 
In the office there was a heater…..
This heater came about three feet off the ground against one wall of the office.  Jynene stood right in front of the heater because she was cold and wanted to warm up.  Claire went and stood next to her because she was also cold.  Garnet went next to them, but instead of standing in front of the heater, he sat on it.  The entire room started to smell like burned rubber and there were many comments about the stinky-ness of the room from the English speakers but we made no connection to us. The police officer started pointing and gesturing to the three near the heater, until finally Jynene figured out that Garnet was causing the smell because his jacket was melting onto the heater.  He stood up and had a gaping hole in the shell of the jacket with burned goose feathers falling off of him.  A huge clump of the rubber and feathers had stuck to the heater, so the room still smelled horribly until the police officer scraped it off with a knife laughing all the while.  Garnet immediately forgot about the hole in his jacket, and for the rest of the evening, walked around frantically trying to coordinate with the rental company, insurance agency, and tow truck pacing back and forth with a cloud of feathers trailing him.  He looked like he was pooping feathers. Claire meanwhile followed him and either tucked back his jacket or cleaned up the feathers he was dropping everywhere.  Jynene and I are cracking up right now with the memory of the scene.  Thanks, Garnet, for lightening up our evening with your absent-minded professorial ways.

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