Does a 30-minute ride from Ridgewood, Queens to East Williston on Long Island in New York count as a valid 'road trip"? Well, hell comes in all shapes and sizes and duration so…!
About 20 years ago, I was on a yearly visit to my family in NY where I hadn’t lived for a good ten years so I had to borrow my sister’s car to get to see the cousins. My sister’s last words to me were, “Don’t forget to fill the radiator before you leave there!” I did.
On the way back, on the Grand Central Parkway, I happened to notice a red light on the dash but, since I only needed glasses for reading, I didn’t have them on and couldn’t see what the red light indicated. I drove on in blissful ignorance but then, even without glasses, I could see smoke escaping from the hood and went onto the exit ramp and then the shoulder. Evidently, somewhere between East Williston and the Grand Central, the radiator cap got lost. No one stopped to help this poor damsel in distress and who had a cell phone back then? I decided to walk up the ramp and find a phone before the sun set. Halfway up, a Volkswagon Beetle inched slowly closer to me and asked if I belonged to the car back there. The driver, a tall, lanky, clean-cut looking man about in his 30s, told me he was a cop and would drive me to a phone booth. Yes, I got in! I shouldn’t have but I did and sat as close to the door as I could. He told me his name, showed me his badge and ID but, of course, without my glasses… What I could see looked authentic and so he took me to a pay phone near a set of apartments and kept waiting for me to finish the call. I thanked him and told him my sister would arrive soon. After a while, he finally left.
My sister, however, was more concerned about her car being stripped and went to check on that first. The sun slowly set and the area around the pay phone was getting lonelier and lonelier. Finally she showed up and, in typical New York fashion, could not believe I would accept a ride from a complete stranger. So I explained he was a policeman etc. She asked me his name and, only later, did I understand why she screamed when I told her he said his name was Norman Bates!
P.S. I checked with the precinct he said he was with and was informed there was no one there by that name and that a ‘real’ policeman would have told me to return to my car while he called for help. Who knows? Maybe because the name “Norman Bates” made no impression on me…?