What's Your Worst Stranded On The Side Of The Road Story?

There are a litany of things more terrifying that could happen to you in the car than just being stranded on the side of the road. It's scary and inconvenient, sure, but imagine that beat to hell Nissan Altima you've been keeping at a distance of two to five car-lengths suddenly being next to you on the highway, or coming up hot behind you as you need to suddenly stop.

I, admittedly, have a small fear of being stranded. Part of that fear comes from a story I once heard from a close family friend — the story was about a patrolman who had died after being struck by a car during a traffic stop. So, parking on the side of the road, even when my car is breaking down, has always felt to me like a sketchy enterprise at best. The other part of my fear of being stranded stems from being a woman and the type of attention that attracts.

Luckily, the ubiquitous availability of cell phones has made getting stranded for long periods of time a much less common reality. If you're somewhere with cell phone signal (most places these days) you can call for a tow, or for a friend to come help you out. However, this isn't always the case for every roadside mishap, nor has it always been the case — anybody else remember the pre-cell-phone days?

That brings me to this weekend's question: What's your worst stranded on the side of the road story?

At one point in my life, my grandparents moved within driving distance of my childhood home. My father would pack us three kids into his Cadillac and drive us across the grueling 600+ miles of road from Michigan to Alabama during long school breaks like summer and Christmas. This particular holiday season, our return home would be on a very snowy New Year's Eve. 

The problems began not long after my father gave the driving duties to his brother. Dad was enjoying a little break, having been behind the wheel since the wee hours of the morning (before 6 a.m.), so he let my uncle navigate the flat, desolate roads of Ohio. At some point, my uncle mentioned it felt like cold air was blowing into the car. I also seem to remember power issues. My dad, the trained mechanic, directed that the limp car stop at a nearby rest stop so he could check it out. The diagnosis: the water pump had pumped for its last time. That was ok, though, because it was fixable.

Except that it wasn't. Even though it was the early 2000s and we had a basic cellphone that could make calls, every store and repair shop had already closed for the nearing New Year's celebrations. Now the party of five — three of those being us kids — were stranded.

I can't recall how my father found him, but it felt like hours of looking through the Yellow Pages and making calls before we were able to employ the help of a rare stationiwagon taxi. We piled in with what little bit of luggage could fit with our group and finished the last few hours of our journey. I cannot imagine the bill for that was cheap, either. New Year's Day, my dad enlisted a family friend with a tow truck to take him back out to Ohio to retrieve the car so he could fix it for his return to work.

This is a pretty mild getting-stranded story, so it's up to you to share your most desperate of roadside moments. Up the ante here. Did you have to hitch-hike home? Are you still currently stuck? Just keep in mind some of the kids reading this today might not understand things like the Yellow Pages, cell phones that could only make calls, and the lack of Ubers. Oh, the terror!