Luck of the Irish

On Friday night, Luke lost his car keys somewhere in Ithaca, where he was visiting Wes and doing an ROTC drill competition. He called us Saturday morning. We had some spare keys hanging on a nail in the garage that maybe were for his car, or maybe were for Laura's long-lost Legacy GT, or perhaps for some other car, we weren't sure. AAA got him into the Forester so that he could get his things out of it, but he still had no way to drive back to Rochester Sunday morning. Dad and I got ready to spend Saturday afternoon driving to Ithaca with the maybe-keys and, if necessary, if they didn't work when we got there, hot-wiring the Forester. But just in case, I called Lucy: home in Earlville for the weekend, but not going back to Ithaca until Sunday night or Monday morning. Not soon enough for Luke's plans. She gave me Bryan's number, and I called him, just in case: quite surprised to hear from Mrs. Murphy, not planning to come home for the weekend. Whitney was meeting her mom in Syracuse and if we'd gotten in touch sooner that might have been a possibility . . . but too late. Oh well. We were on the point of going out the door when Luke called: Travis was driving from Hamilton to Ithaca to visit his brother and would pick up the keys. He arrived shortly thereafter. Dad gave him the keys, tools to break into the car, the clicker from my Forester just in case it worked on Luke's (it works on the Outback, who knows why!) Sooner or later, if you look hard enough, Somebody from Earlville will be driving to Ithaca for the weekend. You can count on it.

Luke called a couple of hours later. One of the keys worked and he was safely in the Forester and able to drive it home. Dad and I didn't have to drive to Ithaca after all. Luke is still more or less out of luck because the lost keys include several that he needs back at college and will be hard to replace. But at least he can get into his car and drive it to where it needs to be. Thank you, Travis (and Lucy and Bryan!)