Two hours after we left, in Cumberland, Maryland, my "overheat" light came on. In Louis' own idiomatic jargon, (it was an "idiot light", rather than a continuous-reading gauge) this meant that it was time to add water to reconstitute the engine. This we did, and then, leaving the interstate to find more water in case we should run low again, we got lost. It wasn't serious and within a half hour we were back on the highway. We decided to stop and get something to eat and let the engine cool down. So we stopped at a Burger King, and the person behind the cash register took me much too seriously when I asked (in my most ludicrous simulated German accent) if I could have eggplant on my burger. After eating and cooling we departed westward hoping we wouldn't overheat any more.
Temperature was against us, however, and overheat we did, almost immediately. Naturally, we stopped and emptied our water jug into the reservoir bottle. This necessitated that we leave the highway (70) and find more water to refill the jug.
This pattern was several times repeated before we finally got hip to the fact that we should get some more jugs or we would find ourselves overheated with no more water. We found a gas station which had a number of empty anti-freeze (haha) containers in a dumpster. These we commandeered and filled, resulting in a car filled with 7 one gallon jugs of water.
Louis soon got to an equilibrium state of water intake: one gallon every ten minutes plus or minus 40 seconds. We timed it. All night this went on. Every ten minutes we would fall out of the car and put water in the engine, one of us holding the flashlight and one of us pouring the water.
Forethought had provided us with a list of Renault dealers in the U.S. But we knew that we were unlikely to find one with a service department open in the middle of Friday night, or Saturday for that matter. We saw that there was a dealer in Champaign, Illinois. Since this was where Joshua's mother lived, and was our intended first stopping point, we decided to see if we could make it to Champaign, where we could hang out until dealer availability occurred Monday morning.
At one point, about 5 o'clock Saturday morning, Joshua was driving, and we heard an explosion in the back of the car. Upon looking, we found that our reservoir bottle had exploded. We were only about 4 hours from Champaign so we would gamble on pouring water directly into the radiator.
We stopped in Indianapolis for gas and water. When we were ready to move on we found that Louis wouldn't start. In case you don't know, Indianapolis is flat. No hills. We tried pushing Louis around the gas station lot, but since he was loaded to the windowtips with my entire world and with full water jugs, we couldn't get up enough speed to get him started, even with the help of the station attendant.
We retired to an available HoJo for breakfast. (We considered calling "Triple A" for a free jump start: "Where are you?" "I'm not sure; let me see, there's a tree, and a road, and some clouds and a rock.") upon completing our HoJo-fare we returned to the gas station and thought it couldn't hurt to try Louis again. He started right up, without even a push. And to the consternation of the gas person who thought he'd been pushing us because the car wouldn't start, we drove again westward.
We got to Champaign and drove straight to the Renault dealer on the small chance that service, or at least parts, might be open on Saturday. Sales was open, and we were informed by a friendly salesman that we had missed the parts department by minutes. [ We thought that we probably needed a new water pump, and that if we got a pump we could probably find a gas station to install it.] He assured us that we could get serviced Monday morning first thing and so we contented ourselves to wait.
Monday morning we took Louis in and were informed that we did, in fact, need a water pump. But they didn't have one.
They could order one from Chicago and it would arrive in ten days. We weren't about to sit on our asses for ten days, so we borrowed Joshua's mother's car to drive to Chicago in search of a water pump.
After getting lost and misdirected, etc., we finally found the water pump and started back toward Champaign. At this point Joshua's mother's car decided to go on the blink. It started to sputter and cough, but when it slowed down it would revive until it started to gag and choke, and so on. With experimentation we discovered that the car was quite happy to go slower than 50, but that over 50 it was quite distressed indeed. So, at 49 miles an hour we drove the seemingly interminable distance from Chicago to Champaign.
We got back too late for Monday water pump installation, but they promised us that it would be done by Tuesday at noon. Tuesday at 1:30 we got the call to go pick up the car. We got in and drove it back to Joshua's mother's house. As we got there, in ten minutes, the overheat light came on. We took the car, furious and disgusted, back to the dealer. They said, "It's because you've got no water bottle." Well, we damn well weren't going to drive back to Chicago at 49 mph to get a goddamn water bottle. So we talked them into jury-rigging something if we could find a suitable water bottle substitute. We found some mason jars that were the right size, and of course we had to buy a case of them in order to get one. We took the jar(s) to the Renault dealer, and the turkey mechanic smeared putty around the inside the lid and screwed it onto the jar with the original reservoir bottle valve apparatus in the lid in place of the removable mason jar lid piece. I call him a turkey because as soon as we drove away the heat and pressure melted the putty and the jar opened right up, thereby incapacitating its pressure retention effectiveness. We went back to the dealer who maintained still, again, and always: we needed a water bottle.
The next day, Wednesday, we called junkyards and car fixit places for a water bottle or suggestion. No luck. We decided to try our own ingenuity at solving the problem. We took a mason jar and epoxied the valve mechanism into the lid, and then epoxied the lid onto the jar. Then around the outside of the jar-lid junction we gobbed more extra-sealant, just-in-case epoxy. We tested this simulated water bottle and found, to our surprise, sure pride, and satisfied-ness, that it worked! Finally something had happened to us that wasn't discouraging and obstructive. Without wasting any time we loaded up again and set out, from Champaign, Wednesday night at 6:30.
At l0 that night, I had a flat tire. It was exploded beyond repair. There was no question about it, I needed a new tire. The spare we put on was none to good, and probably would not get us to the next big town, Des Moines, that would have a Renault tire, and was 200 miles away. So we decided to spend the night where we were, in Davenport, where we knew we could get a tire in the morning. We started to sleep in Louis, but it was profoundly uncomfortable. So we looked for an open space outside where we could sleep. We found a nice one, but immediately upon exiting the car we were mercilessly attacked by voracious mosquitoes. We then looked to see if there might be a cheap motel where we could spend the night. "No, not in quad cities, anyplace. Not in the summer. Everybody's travelling and everybody stoops here, we're full by 3 pm every day." So we wound up spending an uncomfortable night curled up, like pretzels, in Louis' front seats.
The next morning we found the local Renault dealer, only a mile or so from where we had slept. We got there as the owner arrived to open the palace up. He was a very friendly fellow, and he made every effort to help us. And damn if he didn't have a water bottle! And he had a used, but sturdy-looking tire which he sold us for 5 bucks. We were very pleased, and optimistically hoped that this was the beginning of our good luck. We mounted the semi-new tire and stashed the new water bottle just in case our home-made one should give out. We started out, spunky and refreshed, Thursday morning about 8 o'clock.
At l0:45, the engine spluttered and my overheat light came on. I pulled over and stopped. The engine was smoking. I turned off the engine and we put some water in. We tried jumpstarting Louis by rolling him backwards down the hill we had just driven up. He didn't want to start. We then started to push him by hand back up the hill we had just tried to pushstart him down. We knew we had to get the car off the highway, and we were only a hundred yards from an exit ramp.
Earlier, in a rest area, I had overheard someone talking about what a scorcher it was going to be that day, temperature estimated at l00 degrees. We had decided that, at the next available opportunity we would get a container for some drinking water. Naturally, said opportunity had not yet presented itself. This lack of water only contributed to our misery as we pushed a fully-loaded Louis, uphill, over sunbaked pavement, in the middle of the day, with the sun beating down and not a cloud in the sky. Passing cars whizzing past seared us in gusts of pavement-heated Iowa air. We knew what we had to do, and we kept pushing. While we were pushing, one of my tires went flat. It was certainly ludicrous, but it wasn't very funny, at the time. We changed the tire and pushed Louis the rest of the way off the highway.
There was nothing commercial at this particular exit. All there was was just a road and cornfields. The road dipped under the interstate, and the obvious thing to do was to push Louis down this little hill. If he started, good; if not, he could sit in the shade under the interstate until relief arrived. Well, with a final burst of energy we got Louis rolling down the incline. I engaged 2nd gear, and, to my delight, Louis started! I didn't understand when Joshua ran up, hoarsely panting, "Turn it off!" He pointed out that as the engine had started all the water we had put in came out of the tailpipe.
Slowly, the meaning dawned on me. Louis was dead. We sat, and laughed, and mourned. Then Joshua went off in search of a towtruck while I sat and said goodbye to Louis and took some pictures, and sat, and wrote down some of my adventures with Louis, and sat, and waited, and sat, and wondered when I would get something to drink, and sat...
3 and 1/2 hours later Joshua showed up with the tow truck. When he had gotten to the gas station the tow truck was having its air conditioning fixed. So, while I was sitting waiting with Louis, Joshua was sitting at the gas station waiting for the tow truck to be fixed. As we rode in the cab of the tow truck with Louis attached behind, we were informed that likely it was not our water pump at all, but our head gasket, and that the dealer should have known that. In any case, Louis was dead at that point with one severely cracked block.
We spent the night at a Holiday Inn, where the towtruck driver graciously deposited Louis. We cleaned Louis out, showered luxuriously, and considered our possibilities. We had a load of stuff to get somehow from Holiday Inn, Newton, Iowa, to Budgie Palace, Eugene, Oregon. We had ourselves with which to do likewise. And there was one dead, and sorely lamented, Louis, who had somehow to be removed from the Holiday Inn parking lot.
The next morning, Friday, a week out of DC, we went to a local moving and storage company and got their biggest boxes. A junkyard said it would come and tow Louis away and give me $l5 for him. What an disrespectful way to part with an old friend. I couldn't see towing him to a cliff and pushing him over, it would cost too much; Iowa's flat. So I took the l5 bucks and some pictures.
This was my last view of Louis. I would have taken more pictures as he receded into the distance but this was the last frame on the roll. Poor Louis, tail in the air, being towed to Car Country, Newton, Iowa. If I ever go through Newton again (God forbid!) I'll stop at Car Country and look in on ol' Louis.
We took a cab, with all our boxes, to the bus depot. We had a baggage allowance between us of 300 lbs. Naturally the friendly buslady, when she saw the size of our boxes, wanted to weigh them. So she brought out her little beside-the-bathtub, not-legal-for-trade scale and had Joshua climb on the scale with boxes, one at a time. The first two weighed in all right at 60 and 90 lbs., respectively. The last one was the heavy one. Joshua weighed l50 lbs. I handed him the last box, when the scale stopped wiggling it read l55. Either the box weighed 5 or 305 lbs, or we had broken her scale. We decided the latter was the case. We broke her scale, in Newton. Sir Isaac himself would be proud. Of course, she couldn't say we were overweight so we got on the bus. We rode all the way from Newton to Eugene, listening to Grateful Dead tapes through headphones connected by long wires across the aisle, by bus, and arrived in Eugene on Sunday, July l7, l977.
