My friend Julie recently wrote about her strange encounters in West Virginia. I was amused, but not surprised; I have my own weird experiences with West Virginia. This is one of them.

I took two years off between high school and college to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. In the meanwhile, I was restoring a vintage MGB-GT and looking for a job. Something fun. Like working at a ski resort.

I don't remember my first time on skis. I was probably three. My parents loved to ski, so they started us as soon as we could stay upright. We went to eastern mountains on holiday weekends and the Rockies for spring break. It occurred me that loading people onto chairlifts forty hours a week and spending the rest skiing on an employee pass might be a sweet gig.

So I headed out to Snowshoe, West Virginia, in the MG. I talked my friend Sean into coming with me, even though he'd never been on skis. We had a four-hour-plus drive in a car without a working stereo; I had plenty of time to explain chairlifts to a captive (and unemployed) audience.

To get to Snowshoe, you drive through the Monongahela National Forest. I didn't mind. It was a beautiful day. The car was perfect, fresh from the shop with two new carbs and shiny air cleaners. It was a good day for a drive.

We were probably ten miles into the forest when it happened: a loud snap followed by some loud clunks, the car coasting to a stop, the sickening smell of antifreeze. "What the hell was that?"

We got out. Sean ran a tenth of a mile back to pick up whatever had fallen off the car. I popped the hood and ducked away from a jet of coolant spraying up like blood from a severed artery. As the fountain subsided, Sean appeared, looking grim. Without comment, he handed me the part. It was one of the shiny air filters, and it was mangled.

We were absolutely alone. We were on an empty two-lane highway in the middle of a forest, enormous trees forming a leafy canopy over the road, sunlight streaming through in places and dappling the ferns with gold, and nothing but woods and deer for miles in any direction. We didn't have a phone; this was 1989. We were stuck.

So we waited. After a few hours, we were picked up by some Park Service guys in a green Cherokee. They drove us to the nearest town, a one-horse burg with no stoplights, and dropped us off.

But we still had to find a phone to call AAA. We asked at a gas station; they didn't have a public phone and wouldn't let us use theirs (for a toll-free call, mind you), but suggested that we might find one a few blocks away. We checked. It was broken. We kept walking. We asked a few more times. Finally, someone took pity on me and let me use a store phone, after which we sat glumly on the curb for forty-five minutes, pondering our luck.

The tow truck driver was the embodiment of every bad cliché about West Virginians. He was big and stupid with a gimme cap pulled over unwashed blond hair. He probably had complicated relationships with his relatives. I didn't ask. I just gave him directions back to the car.

Once the MG was loaded on the flatbed, the tow driver asked where to go. I gave him directions to my mechanic's shop in Maryland. He filled out some forms, then presented me with a bill.

I objected. "I have AAA Plus," I said. "That covers me for a hundred miles of towing."

"When you count in the drive from my garage, it's over a hundred miles. This is the bill for the rest."

Excuse me? "The hundred miles starts from the point of tow, not from the garage of the tow driver," I pointed out.

"You have two options. You can pay me and I'll drive you home, or I can leave you here with your car," he said, and leaned back to wait for my decision.

I handed over my Visa card and signed the bill. He handed me my copy of the receipt, pulled out, popped in a country tape, and hit the gas.

I learned something right away. There's only one rule of the road in West Virginia: take your half out of the middle, and the smaller vehicle moves. The truck also had a bouncy suspension and no seat belts. I clung to Sean until we arrived, certain we would die at the hands of an inbred, extortionist redneck.

Tom, the mechanic, took a look under the hood and figured out what had happened out there. The bolts holding the front air cleaner had snapped. The air cleaner dropped down, bounced forward off the angled manifold cover, snapped all the blades off the fan, and put a six-inch gash in the radiator. What are the odds?

A few weeks later, the car was repaired with used parts, Sean and I accepted jobs at a closer ski resort, and the air cleaners were recalled for defects in the included bolts. But another strange and unpleasant encounter had been added to my West Virginia shit list.

I got run out of town in West Virginia once. But that's a story for another time.

mood: urban