House of Eratosthenes

I’d consider it a personal favor to me if you can just think a kind thought about the folks who are connected in some way to Granzella’s in Williams, CA. The place is about 90 miles North of here. It is known to me as one of very, very few places where ol’ Bessie let me down.

Where is Williams? A little background. In late ’96, Bessie was seven years old and had just a little over 200k on her. I rewarded her for her faithful service by wrapping her around a tree. Bessie is a plastic-and-aluminum Toyota that weighs a little over a thousand pounds with a full gas tank, so when I say the tree was no bigger than it needed to be, I’m not talking very much tree at all. Big around as a rake handle. It split Bessie down the middle, sparing the engine but destroying everything else including the radiator.

The mechanics who put her back together, while dedicated, are best off looking elsewhere for a recommendation. They made her whole against some trying circumstances, some of which were my doing, others of which were decidedly not. But I’m displeased at the mechanical problems that cascaded from that event, and our adventure in Williams some fourteen months later is the prime example of that.

Bessie’s new radiator was the wrong one.

I found this out when a geyser of hot water erupted under the right headlamp housing while I was trying to pass a semi. In January of ’98. Right by Williams.

As luck would have it…”Kidzmom” and I had rented this classic the very night before, in which Kurt Russell’s wife is abducted when his pickup truck breaks down and he goes to get help. I limped ol’ Bessie off the freeway and shut down the engine, which was protesting this sudden expulsion of coolant — probably all of it in half a second, I would guess — through ominous temperature gauge readings. The first ride I flagged down, was a mechanic who owned his own shop.

The boy was seven months old. The intent was to go all the way to Bellingham, 800 miles further North, and introduce him to his grandfather for the first time. Didn’t happen. I figured, and figure still today, that Bessie’s “hiccup” was a cheap lesson, the first warning shot that the hasty repair job a year previous wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Anyway, with a hearty “we’ll be right back!” I left with the mechanic to get his tow truck. We were back within twenty or thirty minutes, I think. The baby was laughing his fool head off. “Kidzmom” was crying her eyes out, hysterical. All would have probably been okay, except for having seen that movie the night before. This was like frosting on the cake.

We “crashed,” in the innocuous sense, in Williams. One of the last chores before the evening retirement was a hasty call to the grandpa, explaining that after everything was ship-shape we were looking at admitting defeat and turning back, making another attempt later. He was understanding about it…disappointed naturally.

This was an epochal event, the first time Bessie had failed to fulfill all of our transportation needs in this mission or that one…my own foolishness fourteen months prior notwithstanding. It was a harbinger of a dismally exciting maintenance record ahead. Which…well…no, she’s mostly been as reliable since then as she was previous. But we didn’t know that at the time. We had a small baby; we were concerned. Granzella’s was a huge help in softening the blow. Mom, boy and I were in much higher spirits as we retired for the night, even though we were a hundred miles from home with our transportation scuttled for the time being. I still have the “Granzella’s” miniature wine goblets we got that night.

Lotsa Miles I’ll always be the kid’s dad, but I’ve found it necessary to change women. That’s a story with considerable detail to it, that I’d rather not explore here…but I don’t think I can let Granzella’s sampling of misfortune pass by without comment, since they didn’t let my own misfortune pass by without their much-valued hospitality, which made all the difference in the world that evening.

If you have ever passed through Williams, you’ll have the beginnings of an understanding of what a bitter blow this must be. Williams, CA is Granzella’s. There is that…a gas station, a bank machine, a few streets, and that’s about it. Colusa is twenty or thirty miles down the road, and they’ve got stuff there. But economically, you do not want to be the guy who works at Granzella’s, and wakes up to find himself without a job.

For the human-interest angle, exploring the rich history of the place, you can go here.

Oh and Bessie? She’s put together a rich history of her own. Another decade, and a total of 338,000 miles on the odometer plus something (picture to the right was taken a few months ago). Kidzmom and I didn’t make it, and much of this has to do with a predilection for issuing distress calls toward her knight in shining armor, when the situations warranted, as well as when they did not…I think she’d agree with that. This was one of the occasions when, emotionally at least, it was warranted, because the poor woman was a complete wreck. I’ve often felt bad about that since then. But with the passage of a few years, well, it got funny. How could it not? We were watching a movie about a freeway breakdown, on the very night before we left on a nine hundred mile road trip in real life. Seemed like a great idea at the time.

Wow. That’s too bad about Granzella’s. As for the rest? You sure covered a LOT of ground (metaphorically speaking) in this post, Morgan. And a lot of literal ground in the Toyota. Not many people get that kind of mileage on a car. Full-stop.
- Buck | 10/15/2007 @ 13:17
I have a much better mechanic now. Ralph is now asking me “You gonna make four hundred in that thing?” And I tell him “I’m keeping it out of the ditch and making sure it doesn’t get squished, the rest is up to you.”

The last four visits to Ralph’s shop, however, were cooling-related. That’s cause for concern. On the other hand, there really isn’t much left under the hood with a potential to cause problems in that area. We’re keeping a close eye on it.
- mkfreeberg | 10/15/2007 @ 13:25
[…] Read the rest of this great post here […]
- Kurt Russell » Granzella’s | 10/16/2007 @ 21:57
[…] This was the start of a mild decline…although she did snap out of it, in a sense. New parts were found, and plugged in again — and we kept finding out the mechanics didn’t do it quite right. There was that adventure in Williams that we had after it became clear the new radiator hadn’t been plugged in all cockeyed. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 01/29/2008 @ 07:31

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Granzella’sSunday, October 14th, 2007

Granzella’s
Sunday, October 14th, 2007