RAY: Hi. We're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack, the Tappet brothers, and we're here to talk about cars, car repair, and the answer to last week's Puzzler.
TOM: Yes. This was a great Puzzler.
RAY: Well, I don't know if it was great, but it was --
TOM: I thought so.
RAY: -- it was at least mediocre, which is all I was shooting for. This old guy is driving --
TOM: Only the mediocre can always be at their best.
RAY: This old guy is driving home late at night. He's on his way home from vacation. He's been out of town for a while and here he is, be-bopping along the highway, and he's still some considerable distance from home, and he suddenly feels himself having a heart attack. He says, "Oh my God. It's the big one. I'm coming to join you, Elizabeth." So, thinking quickly, he takes the first available exit off the highway, knowing not where it would take him, and as luck would have it, he winds up in a residential neighborhood. Now, it's very late at night. He pulls over at the side of the road behind some parked cars, and he's fading fast, but he has the presence of mind to pull out his cell phone and call 911. Of course, his car is completely stopped before he makes the call. Otherwise, we'd kill him.
TOM: We'd kill him. Exactly.
RAY: And he says to the dispatcher, "Help, I'm having a heart attack." She says, "Where are you?" He says, "How the hell should I know." She asks, "What exit did you take?" "I don't remember." "Were you going north, south, east?" "I don't remember any of that." "Can you tell me what street you're on?" "I'm in the middle of the block. I'm parked. I don't see any street signs, and I can't move. I'm fading fast." She says, "Well, nice knowing ya." She says --
TOM: "You're done for!"
RAY: "You're in a residential neighborhood? Start blowing your horn and someone will come out of a house." So he sits there and honks the horn. Nothing. She says, "Can you possibly drive your car to the intersection and give me the names of the streets?" He says, "I can't do it." When all hope seems lost, she asks him to do one more thing. Minutes later, an ambulance is on its way there and saves his life, and the question is: what did she ask him to do? Now, this isn't 100% guaranteed that it's going to work, but it's the only thing that would work, and what she asked him to do was to give her the plate number of the car that he is parked behind, thinking that whose ever car it is lives right there.
TOM: Right there. It's a residential neighborhood, and it's late at night. I remember you said that.
RAY: All the hints were there, man. The thing was ripe with hints. So who's our winner, man?
TOM: Wow! That's good. The winner is Ann Petty from Anchorage, Kentucky. Kentucky? Really?
RAY: Hey. Just go with it, man.
TOM: And for having her answer selected at random from the cornucopia of correct answers that we got, Ann will get a $25 gift certificate to the Shameless Commerce Division of the Car Talk section of Cars.com and with that gift certificate, she can get one and nine sixteenths copies of our new CD, "Car Talk Car Tunes, the Car Talk Compendium of Disrespectful Car Songs." Wow.
RAY: And what might you find on that collection, pray tell?
TOM: Well, here's a couple of titles. My Car's Going Under The Wrench. That's a song about a heap. It's A Rental. That's a car about a song that becomes a heap over the course of a weekend, and The Duct Tape Madrigal in C Major. That's about how a car remains a heap. You're getting the idea, you know? Actually, you can sample some of these yourself. You go to our website, the Car Talk section of Cars dot com and you can listen to parts of all these songs.
RAY: Pretty cool.
TOM: Yeah.
RAY: It sounds pretty shameless actually, what you're doing too.
TOM: Why, thank you, doctor.
RAY: We're have a brand new Puzzler coming up in the third half --
TOM: Yes.
RAY: Yes. The third half. So stay tuned for that. In the meantime, our number is 888, Car Talk. That's 888, 227, 8255. Hello, you're on Car Talk.
[ Car Talk Puzzler ]
