I'm a new member of the Georgia Fieros, thank you for having me! I got here because Raydar and I have become on-line friends. Raydar tells me that I got to know Don Hulse on only one night of his long, illustrious life, and I wanted to make a permanent record of how I remember that day. I'm sure many of you have heard this story, here's my version.
The year is 2005. I'm in Douglasville, GA because wifey and I are returning from the Fiero Factory in my '88 Formula that just got the 4.9 Caddy V8 conversion. We had just visited my old friend from Florida, Alexander Rakstis, and we are heading
back to my brother's house, also in the Atlanta area.
So we are at a stop light in Douglasville, the V8 conversion is approximately 2 days old, and I look out the passenger window, and I see smoke billowing forth. Turns out the air conditioning system has sprang a leak.
We pull into the nearby Chickfilla parking lot. I'm 56 years old, in a strange town, not prepared to do auto repairs, but we use common sense and call AAA. It is a Saturday, and I am questioning who we are going to find to repair the car on a weekend.
AAA pretty much failed us! Let's guess it was noon when the car broke. We spent the whole afternoon waiting in the Chickfilla parking lot! We of course called AAA from time to time, trying to find out what the hold-up was.
Cut to the chase - a young police officer who was on disability (from an on-duty accident) and his wife came by and showed interest in our plight, and he offered to try to fix our car. When AAA finally showed up, we had the car towed to his house.
I guess Don was a secondary player in this action - the police officer must have called him. I do remember that when it became time for the grateful repairees to write checks to compensate the volunteers for saving our butts, Don claimed he was due no compensation.....
That was the only time I ever met Don Hulse. My best rememberance is of him holding a thermometer, measuring the temperature of the air coming out of my dash board vents.
Then we drove back to Vero Beach, Florida, only to be run over by two medium-strength hurricanes within 2 weeks of each other. But thats another story......
May Don rest in peace. When two out-of-towners needed him, he was there for us. Forever grateful.
