My pick-up truck, furious to have been left off my hard-hitting year-in-review post, got a little hot around the collar recently.

Literally.

And again, by “literally,” I mean, “figuratively.” I’m not a professional mechanic, but I do not believe most cars wear collared shirts. I was driving near the Ol’ Scaia Place a few days back when my dashboard beeped at me.

“Check Gauges!” my truck’s sensor display declared. “Check Gauges!”

The needle for the engine temperature was pointing right at the “H.”

“I probably shouldn’t have needed a separate gauge to tell me to look at the first gauge,” I thought to myself as I pulled over.

I was close enough to a Pep Boys to make it that far. I got out and, as an expert mechanic, nudged the coolant bottle. Nothing happened.

“It must be empty,” I brainstormed.

The area around the coolant receptacle was not empty, though. There was some splattered nearby.

A guy from Pep Boys came out to ask if I needed help or, perhaps, a fire department.

“Look at how great that battery looks!” I said to him, nodding thoughtfully.

We started looking for a leak in the coolant. He went to open the the cap.

As an expert mechanic, I exclaimed, “Warning! Do not open! Those lines mean it’s sizzlin’!”

As an actual mechanic, he replied, “It’s okay, it’s been a few minutes.”

He couldn’t find the leak nearby. They couldn’t get me in that afternoon, either. This was New Year’s Day, so a lot of the other shops nearby were closed, too.

“No matter,” I said confidently. “I’m sure if we fill ‘er back up, all will be well.”

“Probably,” the actual mechanic said, frowning. “You’ve still got a leak somewhere, but if you haven’t had a problem with it before, it might be slow enough that the tank won’t empty for another couple days.”

I probably should have known there’d be a problem immediately, given that some neighborhood kids gathered ’round my truck when I got home to roast marshmallows.

I called around to the quick-lube places and mechanics nearby. They were all closed.

“Coolant leaks don’t take a vacation,” I tried to explain, this time, shaking my head thoughtfully.

I peered outside the window. The truck, still upset about the omission, was dripping coolant ever so slowly onto the driveway.

“We’ve been together since SuperOregon!” the truck cried out with each drip. “And I’m not in the year in review?! But watermelons made it?! [drip]”

Nevertheless, I just needed the drip to be slow enough to get me to work in the morning, then I could take it to a shop on a non-holiday to find the leak.

The following morning, I advanced as far as Arlington before the Check Gauges edict arrived.

I go to work at 3:30, so again, I figured mechanics would be too good to be open when it’s convenient for me. I called the newsroom, said I had all my equipment, so I could still file stories and parked outside a Pep Boys that had an open appointment that day.

When Manny, Moe and Jack arrived, they asked if I was their first appointment, the one with an overheating engine.

They seemed to understand when they opened the passenger door and saw my work from the day before.

“The Mountain Dew did little to cool it off,” I explained. “Which is weird, because Mountain Dew couldn’t be more refreshing.”

So I did journalism in the waiting room, filing stories on [this, I can only assume, is the exact reason our news director encourages us to keep a daily log of our work] the funeral for one of the men killed at the church in White Settlement and a firefighter who was hit and injured while responding to a car crash.

Manny, Moe and Jack came out, though, and solemnly explained that the leak was behind the engine block. They’d have to remove the engine to replace the coolant line.

They’d also have to keep it overnight.

An associate texted me, “Looks like it’s time for a new truck.”

“Oh, absolutely not,” I really did reply. I was right to do it. I was about to shell out 200 bucks on a radiator hose and another 400 on labor. I had just invested in the truck’s future.

In Pep Boys’ defense, they paid for my Uber home. They also took my Uber to the station the following morning off the bill.

That actually led to a solid discussion with the Uber driver. I asked if he likes picking people up at 3 a.m. He said he usually winds up with fares from the bars downtown or in West 7th, so he was happy to pick up a guy who wasn’t as likely to throw up in his car. I warned him, because I get up so early, I had been hittin’ the Mountain Dew pretty hard.