Dude, where's my car (key)?

This is the story of a minor-case tragedy on the American Road.

It's a cautionary tale of unfocused behavior and hurrying-through-life buffoonery that triggered all that was to follow — from a shameless man-tantrum and botched automotive surgery to the outright sale of a beloved vehicle.

But let’s start at the beginning.

I was taking my prized 1998 Mercedes E320, the Benzo, on an weeklong tour of rural Nevada, a 1,500-mile journey over four-laners, two-laners and dirt roads -- out there where trouble waits.

Out there, my tragedy came in two parts. But a mistake I made at the onset brought on both.

I usually carry my Benzo’s electric key fob attached to a jangle of house keys, giving it a heft that I always felt in my pocket. Before I left home, I unhooked the keys to leave for my wife and took only the fob.

It was light in my pocket, with a funny feeling that it had a mind of its own, that it would decide to go walkabout at the slightest provocation.

Like me misplacing it.

Which is what happened late one afternoon in my tiny hotel room in a state border town without a stoplight, a place where cars and trucks speed past on I-95, itchy to get somewhere else, anywhere but here.

I reached into my pocket. 

No key.

I tore up my room and faced the fact that I’d dropped it someplace on my walks around town.

OK, fool, I told the old fool. Just retraced your steps. You’ll find it.

I walked to the small library where I’d spoken to a French scholar named Theirry, who was in town doing research on the local Native American tribes. I tore apart an easy chair where I’d sat a few hours before.

“I lost my car key,” I said.

He gave me a look of pity and disapproval, that said “How could you lose your car key?”

I moved on to the high-school football field, to a lonely, rickety set of bleachers where I’d sat an hour before. I got on my knees in the dirt, pulled away some dead tumbleweeds, groping for nothing. 

Not there.

I walked to the home of Lorraine and Junior, their five adopted dogs barking as I walked into the yard. In the living room, I reached into the innards of a Barcalounger as Junior looked on.

“I just might find your keys, too,” I told him.

“Hell, you might just find my gun,” Junior said.

I asked him if I was shit out of luck in this town without a car key 

Junior said I was.

I left the house and retraced my steps across the lot of the Say When bar and casino, back to the library. As I dashed across I-95, something caught my eye.

There on the road shoulder, dusty but otherwise intact, was my freaking key.

I almost kissed it. I had averted disaster, avoided being marooned in a small town facing the penalty of hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to be made right again.

I called my wife. 

She wasn’t happy, and suggested I buy a lanyard to hang the key around my neck.

I promised that I would, but of course I didn’t.

I was in too much of a hurry.

The very second I closed the trunk door, I knew what I had done.

I was in a rush to meet a friend. In one click, I had popped open the trunk but not disengaged the door locks.

Not thinking.

Rummaging around, in a hurry to go nowhere, I then somehow closed the key inside the now-locked trunk.

Standing in the parking lot of a hotel in Ely, I let out a sound like a wounded animal, a howl, shriek, a man-tantrum.

Two men nearby looked over and knew right away what happened. They felt my pain.

“How did you lock your keys in the trunk?” one asked.

That was the start of four hours of excruciating mental anguish, watching my Benzo suffer the consequences of my stupidity. I looked at my iPhone, which had only 10 percent battery life remaining.

I needed a charge -- and quick.

But the charger was -- you guessed it -- in the trunk.

I called AAA and Brett pulled up, a grandfather with a beer belly who’d worked as a local high school shop instructor.

He opened the passenger door pretty quickly, but here’s where the 23-year-old Benzo showed her age. The dashboard lever to pop the trunk no longer worked; I’d always used the fob,

Brett scratched his head. He had an appointment with his tax man. As a AAA driver, his contract didn’t allow him to hang around and continue consulting.

But he did.

We ripped out the back seats and tried to go in that way, but the path was blocked, with only a few small holes through which to maneuver. Brett tried to jump the dead dashboard lever, to no avail.

As he worked, I called the closest Mercedes dealer, 300 miles away in Las Vegas. They listened to the problem and said I’d have to tow the car in for them to fix it.

Fat chance of that.

An hour later, Brett scratched his I head.

“I really don’t know what to do next, he said, “but I know someone who does.”

Brett made a phone call and Andre showed up in a big white pickup. He owned the service station down the road and was known as a Houdini around cars.

That’s exactly what I needed, because I had an appointment the following day in a town two hours away.

The clock was ticking. I was in a hurry.

Andre assessed the situation. I told him to just break the trunk lock and then tie it down. I’d deal with the mess I’d made when I got home.

But Andre had a better idea: Break the back taillight, reach in and disengage the trunk lock. It’d be a lot cheaper than the alternative, he said.

I winced as they used wrenches and pliers to rip off the back light. I took pride in my Benzo. Even with 120,000 miles, she still shined after a good wash. She was my road buddy.

The light came off in pieces. Both men reached into a small hole underneath and both cut themselves doing so. The trunk stayed locked.

Andre said he was on blood thinner. I apologized for what I’d caused as a red streak poured down his arm.

Then that old Houdini had another idea: At his shop, he’d take off the back license plate and then drill a large square hole in the metal beneath to reach the lock just below.

Brett towed me over the few blocks to the shop, and Andre went to work.

Ninety minutes later, he finally got the trunk door to open, but here’s the thing about my terrible afternoon: he couldn’t get it to close again. The lock would not engage.

“I musta moved some stuff around in there,” Andre said.

He worked another hour and finally gave up. It was quitting time and he joked that I was tapping into his beer-drinking routine. He used masking tape to secure the back hood and I drove off the lot, $180 poorer, with a broken taillight and a trunk lock that wouldn’t work, but on schedule.

Reluctantly, I called my wife to report the entire fiasco.

“How could you lock the key in the trunk?” she asked. “Didn’t you get the lanyard?”

That was it; she’d been urging me to get a new car, saying I couldn’t trust such an old vehicle in my travels around the region.

But I’ was emotionally attached to my Benzo, the car in which I’d had so many adventures.

But there comes a time in a relationship where you realize that you’ve done so much damage to your longtime partner if would be better for both you you to just let them go.

So, today I’m heading out to look for a new car, maybe a Subaru with four-wheel drive for dirt roads and a trunk lock that engages from the dashboard.

You know, something idiot-proof.