It was August 2004, and my two friends and I were camping in a gas station parking lot in the town of Glennallen, Alaska — not because we wanted to but because we were stranded.
Glennallen is a small place with fewer than 500 residents. It is located on the western side of the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, which is where we had been earlier in the day.
As luck would have it, we happened to be in a town later that day and near a gas station moments after the Jeep’s fuel pump went out. Somehow we managed to coast into the station that had a mechanic on duty.
The good news was that the mechanic knew it was the fuel pump and he would be able to repair it.
The bad news was that it would take two days for the part to make it to Glennallen from Anchorage once he ordered it.
There was a hotel near-by, but we were on a two-month road trip from Arizona to Alaska and had spent every night so far camping. We didn’t want to break that streak — or our budget, as all three of us had just graduated college and were trying to stretch the money we had saved for this trip as far as we could.
We decided we would pitch our tent at dusk behind our car where no one could see it and that we would have it put away at dawn before the town’s 500 residents were out and about. What can I say … we were in our early 20s and on a shoestring budget.
Once we knew we were going to be guests of Glennallen for a few days, I dug out my cell phone from the glovebox.
My dad and I got matching flip phones earlier that summer before I left home to drive to Arizona to meet my friends for our road trip; our phones came with new numbers that were just one digit apart. We have the same phone numbers 20 years later.
I hadn’t spoken with my dad in several days and decided to call to check in. He answered on the first ring and quickly asked where we were and how the trip was going.
“At the moment we’re stuck in a small town in Alaska because the fuel pump went out in the Jeep,” I shared with my dad. It just so happened that he was with my grandpa and my uncle at my grandpa’s house in Bluffton as I shared our bad news.
“Do you need us to head that way to help? We can be there in about four days,” he said. In the background, I heard my uncle and grandpa saying the same thing.
My friends and I laughed and said thanks but no thanks, as we expected to be back on the road in a couple of days.
“Your dad was joking, right?” one of my friends asked after we finished the call. Yes he was; but no he wasn’t, I told them.
You see, my dad would have packed up the car and driven to Alaska to get us if I needed him to. And my grandpa and uncle would have been in the car as well. It would have taken him 59 hours to drive the 3,571 miles from Bluffton to Glennallen, but he would have done it without hesitation. My grandpa and uncles would have done the same because family always comes first.
A day doesn’t pass that I don’t stop and think about how lucky I am to have a dad who sacrificed so much for his family as he taught us a myriad of virtues and what matters in life — to work hard, to be thankful, to put family first, and so many more. The values that my grandpa instilled in my dad and my uncles are the same ones he has taught me over the years.
I wouldn’t be who I am today without my dad because of all of the time he put into preparing me for life — skills that continue to serve me well to this day.
I only wish that I would have learned from him how to replace a fuel pump in case I ever got stuck in a small town in rural Alaska because he could do such a task faster than it probably took me to write this column. I guess it’s not too late.
Happy belated Father’s Day, Dad.
jdpeeper2@hotmail.com
