We ‘Celebrated’ New Year’s Eve in a Tow Truck

      It’s New Year’s Eve and we’re not going out. We have a thing about New Year’s Eves, with a pretty good reason.

      We were tired, hungry and cramped as we bounced along winding mountain roads in the cab of a large tow truck. Our three-year-old fortunately was blissfully asleep on my lap, and my husband was seated between us and the driver.

      In pitch darkness, somewhere near the French Mediterranean coast, I managed to make out the time on my watch: midnight. “Happy new year,” I muttered to my husband.

      We were returning from a brief vacation in Parma, in northern Italy, to our adopted home in southern France, a couple of hours northwest of Marseilles. We’d had a lovely trip, and all went well till we started for home in late afternoon on December 31.

      In these days before GPS and weather info on your smartphone, there was more snow on the hilly mountain roads than we’d expected. After driving for about an hour, we saw an ominous sign in Italian that seemed to warn against taking that road without proper vehicle equipment.

      “Uh oh,” I said. “Guess we’d better turn around.”

      “Oh, I don’t think that means us—that’s different,” was my husband’s optimistic response as he proceeded down the road.

      As our path narrowed and climbed, the snow got deeper, and my husband started to consider the possibility the sign just might have meant us after all.

      We began to wonder what it would be like up ahead when the car ahead of us stopped and a man got out. He appeared to be attaching tire chains, which of course we didn’t have. We stopped our car and my husband approached the man, hoping he spoke English.

      As luck would have it, his English was even better than ours. He was British.

      He said the road ahead was impassable without chains or four-wheel drive—surely not in our little Peugeot. Our car was so little, in fact, that when he advised us to turn around, he and my husband were able to turn the car in the right direction with a few pushes (a U-turn on the narrow road, without barriers would have been perilous).

      We would have to go all the way back to where we started, he said, and now it would all be downhill on the steep icy road. “Only use first gear,” he said, adding “and whatever you do, don’t hit the brakes.”

      Oh shit.

      With our three-year-old getting cranky, and my husband and I fearing for our lives, we somehow made it down the hill. Then the only way to the autostrada was an hour or more back the way we came, but we had no choice.

      By the time we made it to the highway, it was dusk and one of the idiot lights on our dashboard was giving intermittent warnings.

      “I’m hungry,” our son piped up. “When can we have dinner?” Not yet. We couldn’t take a chance on delaying our return, knowing it would soon be dark.

      Still in Italy, as we drove along normal roads at last, now at night, the headlights seemed on the dim side. The longer we drove, the dimmer they got.

      If we can just make it over the border into France, we said, at least we speak the language. Our command of Italian was only passable in restaurants.

      “I’m hungry,” from my son again. So were we, but we couldn’t admit it out loud. “Sorry, honey, we can’t stop now.”

      At some point our dim headlights were virtually nonexistent and we had to depend on the other cars’ lights to guide us in the pitch darkness. When we crossed into France, we were relieved to find a place to pull over. My husband walked back to where we’d seen a roadside phone. (Oh, yeah, this was way before cellphones.)

      A tow truck eventually arrived and offered to take us to an auto repair shop in Marseilles, which, of course would be closed. It was New Year’s Eve. So, ditto the next day. That meant we would need to spend the weekend at a hotel at least until the shop even opened. Who knew how long it would take for the car to be fixed?

      No, Marseilles was out of the question.

      Gulp. Our only option was at least a two-hour tow all the way to our garden apartment in the Luberon mountain region of France.

      Fortunately, by now sleepier than hungry, our toddler had fallen asleep in his car seat in the back of our car. I carefully lifted him out, carried him into the cab of the truck, and settled him in on my lap. He never opened an eye.

      As we bumped along through the darkness feeling sorry for ourselves, we both groaned when we saw it was January 1.

      At least it would be late enough—about 2 a.m.—that our neighbors would likely be in bed and wouldn’t witness our embarrassing arrival.

      We were not even allowed that little shred of dignity.

      As the truck entered the building’s steep driveway and hit the iron grating, it made such a loud clang that it woke up everyone in the building. We tried not to look up at the neighbors peering out their windows.

      After placing our still-sleeping child into his bed, we sat down to have a glass of wine as we pondered our dismal situation. Yes, we were safely home—good. We now faced an extremely expensive bill from the towing company—bad. Worst of all, we had a car that didn’t run and would likely prove to be a very expensive repair, at a time when we were already in debt—very bad.

      The wine felt very good, the best we’d felt in 12 hours. We found something to munch on and kept drinking till we stumbled into bed. The next day, the whole episode felt like a bad dream. But the hangover was very real.

      On New Year’s Day we surely weren’t alone in that. Still, ours just didn’t feel fair.

      There really ought to be a word for a horrific hangover that doesn’t result from partying. Bah humbug!

An earlier version of this story first appeared in The Narrative Arc, a Medium publication.