Actually I was not
hip-deep in Soju
-caps at the time although I wished
that I was. We just had a rule that any story that took place in Korea had to
start that way… (credit
EvilPidge)
In reality I was
driving down the back road from the An-jung-ni/Pyongtaek (the red dot) are
north to Osan Air Force Base. Our trusty blue station wagon was taking the
curves and dodging one-eyed buffaloes as well as ever when the radio started to
fade out and the car lost power. I coasted her to a stop and pulled off the side
of the road as best I could.
As “luck” would have it
we had pulled over on the most wretched smelling spot of road in the known
universe! Right outside of Osan is a rendering plant you see, and let me assure
you gentle reader that on this sweltering August day on the Han-pan-do it was a
renderin’!
Sharing in this aroma
were Xtine, my daughter (no link, ever,
you foaming predators), and DifferentHanja. Hanja and I take a look
under the hood (as males are wont to do) and of course come up with nothing
since we are retards. Fortunately we were retards who spoke passable Korean (his
more so than mine) so we braved the stench and moseyed into the rendering plant
to try and scare up some help.
Being Korean guys they
were only too happy to lend a hand to any white guy who even made the attempt to
speak the language. Also being Korean guys they didn’t have anything like jumper
cables in any of their vehicles. After much hand waving and rapid fire Korean
they dispatch the youngest guy, (lets call him Kim), back to the office. A few
minutes later Kim trots back out with something in his hand. On closer
inspection we realize that he is in fact holding some speaker wire! One of the
older guys, (lets call him Kim), hops into his Musso, cranks the engine, and
pops the hood. While we look on in slack jawed astonishment, a third guy, (lets
call him Kim), strips the wire with a knife and tells Kim to hold two of the
ends on our battery terminals while Kim holds the other end to the terminals of
the Musso! So Kim revs the engine, Kim and Kim both grimace in agony as they try
and jumpstart my car, and Kim, me, Xtine, daughter, and Hanja all watch in
amazement while the soft aroma of rendered whatever washes over us.
The car didn’t start. They
kept at it far longer than you might have expected but finally I convince them
to just let me call the Osan Base towing guy to come and get us. I think they
felt quite defeated. (or at least shocked).
There is another jumpstart story with one of our cars but I will let Xtine
tell it if she can remember Ray the guy who did it.