Always Listen to your mother

I always tell my kids that, and they laugh. My big sons all especially laugh, because they've been known to pick up their mother and move her if they don't want to listen. So, about 5 weeks ago, the son who's in college in Erie, PA, had his pickup truck conk out in the middle of an intersection. Since he was blocking virtually all traffic, another guy got out of HIS car to help push my son's truck into a nearby parking lot. My son called home, described his problem, and I told him to get AAA to tow it to a garage I'd found there when my son started college. I said this was either ignition or fuel delivery, but he'd never get the 300 miles home. AAA said, "No problem. We'll be there in 2 hours." My son ate a pizza, then his car started and he went back to the dorm. I warned him to get this taken care of lest he end up on the side of the road on the way home for spring break. Fast forward to last Friday. Near blizzard conditions, son stuck until Sunday. Son starts for home, truck dies again. Cop pushes son into same parking lot. This time, AAA towed him to the garage, which I called early Monday morning, and pleaded to get them to fix the truck faster than "by Wednesday or Thursday." We got lucky. They finished the truck by 4, and I waited dinner until 10 for my son to get home. Pasta Carbonara and fish was a fast, easy dinner for a half starved college kid. Of course, he probably would have eaten home cooked old shoes by the time he got here.

PASTA CARBONARA

1 pound pasta
1/2 stick butter
1 cup whipping cream
2 eggs, beaten
1/3 to 1/2 cup grated parmesan
pepper to taste

Cook the pasta; drain and cover the colander. In the pasta pot, melt the butter, then add the cream and eggs and stir together. Grind in pepper - I used about 10 twists of the grinder - then add the pasta back to the pot and stir in the parmesan. Add milk if needed to make it creamy and smooth, and serve at once.

By the way, it's a Dodge Ram pickup, and the problem was caused by the throttle body being caked up, which contributed to the failure of the ignition control motor. This is evidently a common problem in Dodge vehicles, so anyone who drives a Dodge should be aware of that, and have their throttle body cleaned, probably at about 100K miles.