The Day the Ghosts Left Me Stranded

(This is a continuation from yesterday's post about the haunted bar.  It happened over a year ago.  in my head I thought I made it clear.  In reality, some people thought it happened yesterday.  Sorry for the confusion!)
You would think that an evening of ghost stories would be enough excitement for one night.  I thought it was.  Unfortunately, other folks thought I needed some more.

When our book club meeting was over, we all went out to our cars  My car was at the end of the line, along the street, in the dark, next to the graveyard I told you about yesterday.  When I got to my car I found:

TWO OF MY TIRES WERE GONE!!!  NO BOLTS!!! NO NOTHING!!! 


The thoughts that went through my head, in this order, are:

1.  Is this really happening?
2.  Are the thieves still nearby?
3.  Is this just the mean ghost "making himself known"?
4.  Hubby is going to be soooo very mad.
5.  This is NOT a safe bar.
6.  How am I going to get home????

That last thought sent me straight into the street.  The last of our merry band of book clubbers was pulling out, unaware of the circumstances.  What did I do?  In the dark, completely out of nowhere, I jumped in front of her car.  Nearly got myself run over.  Fortunately, she had a newer car with good brakes and avoided flattening me.  While my body was sprawled across her hood, my feet were still (mostly) planted on the ground.

Then my next thought was, "What am I supposed to do now???"

I love my friend.  She is a feisty New Yorker, and she got mad.  Her little rage at the night calmed me down, made me smile, and cleared my head.  I was able to actually do something productive.

First things first.  I went back into the bar and let those owners know that they really needed to stop saying that their bar was safe.  They didn't believe me when I told them what happened, and so they marched up the street to see for themselves that, in fact, I had two tires stolen.  They were flabbergasted.  Then one of them actually got into his car to go drive off and try to find the perpetrators.  Good luck with that, man.

Next, I called the police.  This is where I wasted several minutes debating in my mind how exactly to do that.  As the daughter of a policeman, I am fully aware that 911 is to be reserved for emergency situations.  The lines need to stay clear for people who actually have an emergency.  I was safe, relatively speaking, and was not in any immediate danger, so I didn't think that 911 was appropriate.  However, no one knows how to call the police anymore.  The days of people having land lines and emergency numbers by the phone are long gone.  No one even has a phone book anymore, so I made my first-ever call to 911.

Operator: "911, what is your emergency?"

Me:  voice shaking My tires were stolen.

O:  Can you repeat that please?

Me:  a bit flustered I came out to my car and my tires are gone.

O:  Where are you?

Me:  pause  Um... a bar. pause  Oh yeah, The Gas Light Inn.

O:  And where is that?

Me:  Uh, hold on.  shout Where are we??  What road is this??  back to normal voice Meridian St.

O:  And what is the nearest cross street?

Me:  shouting What's the cross street?

O:  I'll send a cruiser as soon as one is available.

We waited a long time for that cruiser.  I am assuming that the operator told the policeman to take his time to give the floozy at the bar some time to sober up.  (I had only had Sprite to drink, and I ain't no floozy, but even to my ears, I certainly sounded like one on the phone.)

The cruiser finally pulled up, and out came a man/boy who barely looked old enough to drive, let alone chase bad guys.  He was quite the observant pup.  Took one look at my car and said, "You're missing some tires, ma'am."

He took my report, then asked what I wanted to do with the car.

"Get my tires back, but since that is out of the question, I guess I need a tow truck."

I don't know about you, but I don't have the number of a tow truck memorized, so the policeman called the company that they normally use. 

I thought the wait for the cruiser was a long one.

We stood on the sidewalk between my car and the graveyard for what seemed to be an eternity.  Fortunately, I was with my book club friend who is forever entertaining, mostly because she is forever inappropriate.

She saw this situation as the perfect opportunity to grill the policeman/boy and find out once and for all how illegal she could be without getting arrested.  First question:  "What do you think about legalizing marijuana?"  Second question:  "Would you arrest someone who you found to be just smoking it?"  Third question:  "What if you found that it was in my brownies?  Would you arrest me?"

She then moved on to forcing the policeman/boy to choose between her boyfriend and his policeman colleagues.  "My boyfriend wasn't even speeding, and some moron pulled him over.  With a ticket, he won't be able to get the job he was applying for.  How can he get out of a speeding ticket?  Does he just need to show up in court and tell his side?"  The poor guy jumped on the fact that it was a sheriff that gave her boyfriend the ticket.  He threw the guy under the bus to save his own skin and said, "Oh, you'll never get out of a ticket from a sheriff.  Those guys are just mean."

Finally, the tow truck arrived, and out climbed a boy younger than the policeman/boy.  First words out of his mouth, "You're missing a couple of tires there, ma'am."

It would seem from these two young bucks that the next generation is severly lacking in joke-telling skills.  And they really needed to stop calling me "ma'am". 

So, the "expert" tow truck driver is here, and we should all be ready to roll, right?  Except how is one to tow a car that is missing both tires on one side?  Riddle me that, tow truck man.

This is when his inexperience came flooding out.

His solution: drag the car up the ramp of the truck.  Yes, the bottom of the car would be ruined, but hopefully it can be fixed.  And besides, he doesn't know how else to do it.

Thankfully, we sober old ladies have two heads on our shoulders.

"We aren't experts or anything, but can't we move some tires around in order to get the car up there?"

In the end, we put my spare on the front and my friend's spare on the back.  We had to borrow bolts from the intact tires on the other side of the car in order to hold the spares on.  It was all quite a bit wobbly going up that ramp, but up the ramp it went without any more damage being done.

Three hours after we left the bar, I finally got to go home.  My dear inappropriate friend, who stayed and kept me company and made me laugh, took me all the way home, 40 minutes round trip out of her way.  I so adore her.

But the story isn't over, my friends.

Oh no.

I had the car towed to the dealership, since we were going to need a whole lot more than just new tires.  I had to call our insurance agent in the morning to figure out the details.  No big deal, except that our insurance agent is the deacon at our church.

I had to explain to OUR DEACON how I managed to find myself in a shady part of town, at a dive of a bar, without my husband but with a minor criminal, in the middle of the night, with no tires on my car.

"See Deacon, there are these ghosts..."

Have a lovely day!