There was a time, within my time, when cellphones weren’t around, when to make a call from the road, you needed a pay phone and a quarter. It wasn’t that long ago. Not to me. But I think the ’80s were 20 years ago, tops. Say your car broke down. Flat tire. Engine overheating. Ran out of gas. Lights flashing on the dashboard. Say you were somewhere between a city and nothing. One of those big empty stretches. If you weren’t the sort of person who carried a toolbox, who could fix a car with duct tape and a coffee can, you had two choices—you could sit there and wait, or you could start walking. Hope the next exit wasn’t too far. Hope it wasn’t just an empty crossroad. Maybe you’d pass a farm. Maybe someone was home and they’d let you make a call.

It’s strange to imagine now in our over-connected age. It’s even stranger if you don’t live in a place like Texas, where some of those big empty stretches are a little farther away from anything at all. Where you can drive for hours without a phone signal, nothing coming in on the radio dial; where you can wait forever for help. Nothing but road and sky.

The first flat tire I remember, I’m in my grandma’s little brown Subaru that smells like coffee and cigarettes, somewhere between Amarillo and San Antonio, on the way to visit cousins. I am riding shotgun, a privilege I’ve earned because I can read a map. I’m sure my little brother was in the back seat. But this was in the mid-’80s, and I was only 8. I don’t remember if he was there at all. I hear the whomph, whomph sound over her swearing as she pulls over onto the shoulder and gets out. I follow, trying to avoid the weeds so I won’t have to spend the rest of the day picking burrs out of my shoelaces.

The sun is beating down on us so brutally it looks like the road ahead is wet, yet it’s dry as a fence post once you get there. The oil pumps are pecking at the ground like dinosaurs. Vultures circle in cloudless sky. Or maybe I added vultures to the scene after watching too many old Westerns. Again, I was only 8. We have three options: Change the tire, wait for someone to come along, or start walking. If we’re lucky, the next exit will have a gas station and a pay phone, though I don’t know who we’ll call.

My grandma looks at the shredded tire, shields her eyes, and surveys our surroundings. I kneel to get a look, like I’m helping with the process, and the blacktop burns my knees and palms. Then she pops the trunk. We’re going to change the tire. She can’t get even one of the lug nuts loose and says a lot of words that I’m not allowed to repeat. I hop on the lug wrench, holding on to the hot metal trunk, bouncing as hard as I can in my KangaROOS sneakers. The nut doesn’t budge. She gives it a couple tries but can’t balance on the wrench like I can on account of she isn’t a squirrelly little kid.

After what seems like hours but could be 10 minutes, she asks me to get the map. She wants to see how far we are from civilization. That’s when a watermelon truck pulls over. I don’t think a single car has passed us before this. But we see the truck coming up the road and she waves. I wave too, a little more frantically. I’m thirsty, hot, and worried about my grandma, who is sweating like the Coke she refused to buy me at the last truck stop.

The farmer stops. He’s driving one of those old square trucks with handmade wooden rails to hold an impossible load of watermelons. He changes the tire like it’s nothing while his son, who’s about my age, teaches me how to choose a watermelon. “Look for the scarring. That means it’ll be sweet.” He cuts one open to prove it, slicing the rind with a huge knife he keeps in a leather sheath on his belt, then drops the watermelon onto the tailgate of the truck so it splits in half. Still the best watermelon I’ve ever had.

My grandma tries to pay the man, for the help and the watermelon I’ve feasted on, and I’ll never forget what he says: “You don’t owe me anything. I’d hate to think I could’ve helped and didn’t. We’re all out here on the road together.” I didn’t fully understand the danger we might’ve been in out there if no one had stopped, if we didn’t see another car for hours. It is an early lesson in what I think is too often forgotten if you don’t live in a place like Texas, where nature and geography have conspired to kill us ever since the first sodbusters showed up; where being stranded on the side of the road, no water, no one and nothing for miles around, can still be deadly.

My grandma wasn’t the healthiest person. She only ever carried one source of hydration and that was black coffee. Back then, we didn’t have water bottles or Stanley cups or whatever fashion accessory we’re drinking out of this month. And if we did, I wouldn’t have been allowed to drink anything that might make me ask for a stop to pee—same reason she didn’t buy me that Coke. The heat likely would’ve gotten to both of us.

I think of the watermelon farmer again, years later, when I pop a tire in a blizzard. I’m not in Texas. I’m up in Massachusetts visiting family. I manage to pull the car over to the side. It isn’t a busy road, but traffic is steady. The shoulder is narrow; my passenger side scrapes a snowbank. Every time I kneel—to fiddle with the jack, to set the lug wrench on a bolt—I feel the passing cars. I’m sure I am going to be flattened at any moment.

This is still before everyone has a cellphone. I certainly didn’t own one, but I’d probably try to handle it myself either way. I don’t need help changing a tire. I made sure I know how to do that much. But all I can think, from the time I’m jacking up the car to the time I’m lowering it back down onto the spare, is it might be nice, just as a gesture, for someone, anyone, to pull over behind me and check. Slow down and ask if I have it covered. No one does. Most don’t even bother to change lanes and give me a little room.

The idea that we’re all out on the highway together isn’t specifically Texan. I’m sure there are people in other places who help people on the side of the road. But after living outside Texas for 20 years—California, South Carolina, the Washington, D.C., area—and traveling in most of the other states, my guess is the idea that we’re all in this together, that we should help one another out, exists outside of Texas only because Texans sometimes travel outside of Texas.

I was a cable guy, for lack of a better term, in the D.C. area for nearly 10 years. Between ages 25 and 35, I could often be found driving around Northern Virginia in a work van. I helped a few old ladies with tires—and more than a few with dead batteries. I’m not the handiest person, but like I said, I can change a tire. I can probably figure out how to change my own oil, too, but I haven’t. Why would I when there’s a place every four blocks that’ll do it for me? In all this time occasionally helping someone with a flat tire or a dead battery, only once did another person pull over to see if I needed help. This was during a hurricane. I was in Alexandria, Virginia.

The rain is coming down in sheets, visibility isn’t much past my windshield, and it’s getting dark. I’m headed home, crawling up Telegraph Road. Then just past the light, I see a woman holding a bright red umbrella. She’s standing on the thin shoulder behind one of those gray oversize station wagons marketed as “crossovers.” I don’t know what’s wrong or if I can help, but I figure at least I can make her a little more visible. When the light changes, I flip on the yellow light atop my van and pull over behind her.

She’s dressed like she works in a government office, which is to say, not for the weather. Her tire’s gone flat. She’s been on hold with her insurance company’s roadside assistance “forever.” We shout over the passing cars to hear one another.

If anyone notices us, all they do is honk. I tell the woman she can wait in her car, and she only hesitates a moment out of politeness, then agrees there’s no sense in both of us getting soaked. Good thing it’s a passenger-side tire. I won’t be kneeling out into traffic.

I’m wrestling the tire off her car when I hear, “Sometimes it helps to give it a good donkey kick.” I look up and the guy standing there, in a Harley-Davidson raincoat with a too-short haircut and a too-long beard, adds, “Not trying to get in your way. I just thought maybe I could help block traffic a little.”

I step aside. I know when I’m not the expert in the room. He donkey-kicks the tire and it comes loose. We get the spare on, a lot faster working together. I ask where he’s from. It’s what everyone asks in a place like the D.C. suburbs, where most people come from somewhere else. “Midland,” he says, then adds, “Texas”—because I haven’t yet gotten excited to tell him I’m from Amarillo. Anyway, I think my point stands.

Maybe I got spoiled from my first few years driving in Texas as a teenager.

A scene: late night at Malcolm’s ice cream shop in Amarillo. My old Pontiac won’t turn over. The manager is gone for the night. I’m alone in a parking lot, trying to think where the nearest pay phone might be. A couple pulls over in a minivan. They’re dressed up for a date night, maybe a wedding. Their babysitter is probably watching the clock. The guy takes off his suit coat and folds his tie neatly in his pocket. He shows me how to connect the jumper cables—so I’ll know next time. I’m a teenager he doesn’t know, but he’s as kind as I imagine a big brother would’ve been. There’s no hint of “you dumb teenager” in his voice. He tells me I’m smart to have cables in my trunk. He wants me to know how to jump a car, to make sure I’ll be all right if I’m ever in this jam again.

Another scene: a road trip to check out colleges. Well, my friend is checking out colleges. I’m pretending to be interested in attending Abilene Christian and mostly excited about spending the weekend away from home. My car, the same old Pontiac, starts overheating just south of Lubbock. I pull into a gas station to use a pay phone. But first, I open the hood. I don’t know why or what I expect to see. Something obvious, like in movies—steam probably.

I don’t even make it to the pay phone. A couple of guys get out of a truck and ask what the problem is. I say it’s overheating. They check the oil. They grab at a couple of hoses. They check the coolant and make sure I know to not open the radiator. One of them asks if I mind if he takes my car up the road and back. I stand there trying to figure out if this is some elaborate ruse to steal my mid-’80s beige sedan. The guy says, “I’ll leave you my brother, like collateral.” Then he clarifies: “If I don’t come back, you can keep him.”

In his defense, I am the one wondering if my car overheating is part of the plan or if they just hang out all day at Allsup’s waiting for some dumb girls to pull up so they can steal a beat-up commuter box. In my defense, I am 17. And all anyone tells you when you’re 17 is all the ways everyone will try to hurt you. They don’t mention that a whole lot more often, people like these guys will take the time to help a stranger.

I see his point, that it’s unlikely an elaborate carjacking, and hand him the keys. He drives my car up the road just like he says, not quite out of sight, then back again. “Your transmission’s starting to go,” he says. “It’s not switching gears easy. I’m guessing you were driving in the wrong gear.”

I don’t know what to say. I’m wondering how much a transmission will cost. He says to take it easy. If the engine sounds like it’s revving too much, slow down and speed back up. I don’t know why this works, but it does. My friend and I make it back from Abilene without any more problems. She goes off to college. I join the Air Force and leave Texas.

Maybe Northern Virginia and Massachusetts aren’t the best examples here. Maybe there’s something about places where everyone’s in a hurry. Spending a good portion of your life stuck in traffic probably doesn’t foster a great sense of community. You start thinking of everyone else as your enemy. They’re in your way. Another reason you’ll be late. You start hating other drivers, complete strangers, for no reason other than they’re trying to get to work or get home at the same time as you. I’ve had the benefit of being paid to sit in traffic. Didn’t make a difference to me if I missed my exit. I was on the clock either way. But as soon as I headed for home, I felt it too. Maybe if you spend enough time in traffic, you start seeing a car broken down on the side of the road and think, one down. Maybe that’s part of why I never felt at home on the East Coast.

I moved back to Texas around 10 years ago, when I was about to turn 40. I’d upended my life and moved into a Winnebago to try and finish a book, maybe be a writer. I missed tacos, and beans that aren’t candied mush. I missed creeks and endless landscapes. And I missed not having to explain that I’m joking every time I say something funny.

When I say “Winnebago,” I should clarify that I am driving an old Toyota truck that, in defiance of all laws of engineering, someone at the Winnebago corporation stacked a house on top of. I’m lucky to push it to 20 miles per hour uphill if I lean forward hard. The A/C doesn’t work and the little switches that control the fuel pumps keep popping out of the dash.

I cross over the state line in the early afternoon. By sunset, I’m approaching Austin. Blame Houston traffic. Blame 20 years outside of Texas, 20 years missing the sky. It’s putting on a show this evening, turning baby blue, the clouds promising a spectacle in an hour. I veer off State Highway 71 and turn again when I see a good hill, the sort that might give me a good view. I pull over in a little cutout by a farm gate to watch the sunset. And then one of those little fuel switches pops out again. No big deal. I think I can wedge it into its slot with a little fold of paper. I fiddle with it and something pops. A spark. I’ve shorted the wires and now the switch doesn’t light up anymore. Neither does the one next to it. The engine dies a moment later. I assume I’ve blown a fuse. No fuel pump, no fuel.

I open the hood to find the fuse box. This truck, like any 30-year-old truck you buy for four grand, has been rewired and cowboyed, if we can use that term for the Pennsylvania coal miner I bought it from. I find a blown fuse. Either replacing the fuse will fix it, or I’ll be calling AAA. Only problem is, I don’t have any fuses. I am wondering what other fuse I can pull, but with all the rewiring that’s been done, I know I can’t trust the diagram. Any fuse could be the radio or the ignition or some other thing that’ll break something else. I think it’ll be funny if this fuse is what’s wrong with the A/C. (It’s not. That would cost me a grand later on.) I understand you might be questioning my decision to purchase this vehicle. I’m busy doing just that when I hear, “Need some help?”

I look up and bang my head on the canopy. I’m still rubbing my head when I realize I’m looking the wrong way. The man hasn’t come from the road. He’s ridden up on a horse. I’m aware how unlikely this sounds, or perfectly likely if it’s your first day back in Texas.

I tell him I’ve popped a fuse but don’t have a spare. “I’d tell you to sit tight, but I don’t think you’ve got a choice,” he says. “Be right back.” Then he does that cool cheek-clicking sound and rides off. I almost laugh. I’m being rescued by an honest-to-God cowboy, hat and all. No way anyone back east would ever believe this.

He’s gone just long enough for me to enjoy the sunset. Nothing else to do. He rides back up to the fence and says, “Catch,” and he tosses a little baggie of random fuses. “Forgot to ask what kind. But you should be carrying spares anyway, old as that thing is.” He’s not being mean, just matter-of-fact. It’s the same tone I heard 20 years ago, when a kind stranger showed me how to jump-start a dead battery. He wants to make sure I’ll be OK the next time. He does another cheek-click and he’s gone.

Elizabeth McCracken, the author, is a friend of mine. I mention this because after you read her story about libraries in this issue, you’ll be very impressed that we’re friends. She says Texas is the only place where people understand both irony and manners. I think these traits are passed down. It’s hard to conceive of our forebears surviving this place without a sense of irony, just as it would’ve been impossible to survive without a little help sometimes. I think we carry that knowledge in our bones. If we don’t help our neighbors, if we don’t stop to help a stranger on the side of the road in this place where the land doesn’t always make us feel welcome, who will? This might be why—in the time I spent talking about and writing this article—others would pipe up with their own stories of a stranger stopping to help them out, and sometimes dispense a little roadside wisdom. Like a watermelon farmer once told me, “We’re all out here on the road together.”

Lauren Hough’s Open Road essay “Getaway Driver” appeared in the March 2022 issue.