I've always been told how careful you have to be while traveling on the highways of this country. Service station attendants will rip you off if your car breaks down on the road, and strangers will surely take advantage of the situation. Well, I want to tell you about our trip we made in 1967.

I had bought a used, 16-foot Pathfinder travel trailer for $1,000. To tow it I invested in a used Buick, the biggest auto I've ever seen, the one with the flaring sharp fins in the back. It also had over 150,000 miles on it. Powder blue it was.

Early on a June morning, the four of us hit the open road, heading for Rocky Mountain National Park. Much of the Plains was in the midst of a heat wave with temps above normal for several days.

We were tolling along beautifully on Highway 60, about 10 miles north of LeMars, Iowa, when the Buick sputtered and quit. This was about 10:00 in the morning.

We came to a stop on the shoulder of the road, and I got out and lifted the hood to stare at this monstrous engine. The gas gauge showed a quarter-full, so I thought it can't be out of gas. About that time a little red pickup truck stopped behind us, and an old fellow in bib overalls comes up and asks if he could be of any help.

He said, "Maybe it's out of gas, so why don't I drive you into LeMars?" So he and I got into the pickup and away we went. He took me to his co-op filling station, they lent me a five-gallon can, had it filled and we started back. He was right; it was out of gas, and it started right up. The old fellow was as happy as we were and said, "I'll take the can back to the station and you can be on your way." We wanted to pay him for his trouble but he wouldn't hear of it.

About 1 p.m. we're in Central Nebraska, heading west, when I hear this bang, and looking in the mirror see smoke coming from the right side of the trailer. The main leaf of the spring had broken and let the tire hit the top of the wheel well; we were just lucky it didn't blow the tire. I thought, "What's next?" By this time it's the hottest part of the day.

I had a car jack with me and a couple pieces of wood 2x4s. I managed to jack the body of the trailer high enough to wedge the blocks of wood between the axle and the frame so the wheel wouldn't rub the wheel housing, and started down the road, slowly, about 30 mph.

At the next town, I found a pay phone and telephone book with the Yellow Pages. I could find only one trailer agency in all of Nebraska, and that was in Omaha, hundreds of miles away. I called, hoping to get some help. A nice man heard me out, but said there was nobody he knew in all of Nebraska who would have a new spring to fit that old trailer.

He asked me where exactly we were, and when I told him, he said, "Do you think you can get to Grand Island?," which was about 75 miles up the road.

"If you can," he said, "go through town and there is a steep bridge over the railroad tracks. Just before you start up that incline, turn right and under the bridge is a welding shop. If anybody can help you, Bill Baasch can."

I thanked him for the advice and started for Grand Island, going about 30 mph, with at least a hundred 18-wheelers lined up behind us, all mad as hornets for slowing them down. They were giving me the air horn and shaking their fists.

Sure enough, there's the bridge. We arrive at Bill Baasch Welding Shop. It's like a junkyard, with an old block building. I run in, hoping to find some help. It's about 3:30 p.m. and hot.

I tell my story, and he said, "It's too late to monkey with it now. Go out of town a couple miles to a county park, spend the night there, and be back early the next morning."

By now the wide and kids are wilting in the day's heat. I got in to start the Buick. It wouldn't turn over; the starter had gone out. I'm trying not to panic, but it's not easy. Back into Bill's for more advice; he says there is a Buick agency downtown. So I can, and pretty soon a teenager with a jeep shows up. In the meantime I had unhitched the trailer and had to leave it in the middle of that dirt road.

I told the wife, "I don't know when, or if I'll ever get back." We get to the Buick garage and all the mechanics have cleaned up and were punching out on the time clock. But the foreman, sensing I'm really worried about the family back at the trailer, asked a big fellow if he would mind putting his overalls back on and helping me out.

I think his name was Bill. He sort of looks me over and says, "Sure, what the hell."

He gets the old wreck up on a hoist and had to drop one exhaust pipe to get at the starter, not an easy job, but he did it, then rebuilt the starter. He finished in about an hour and a half. I was so happy and appreciative.

I asked, "What's the damages?" He figures it all out and said it came to $13.75. I almost fainted.

Back at the trailer, my wife had found a littler park with some trees for shade and a swing and slide for the kids to play on. She also located a little store, so had pop and snacks to keep them content.

Bill had talked to her and said when I get back we should hook up the trailer and pull it into the yard among the wrecked cars, spend the night and "We'll do something in the morning to get you going."

That was some night -- no electricity and a tough bar across the street with lots of yelling. The semis had to shift down to make the climb up the bridge, which was over our heads, plus the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks were about a half-block away. There seemed to be a long train about every 15 minutes with their horns blaring away, and it was hot and the air still, with the sweat just pouring off us.

About 7 a.m. Bill shows up and tells me I'll have to get the spring off the trailer. "There are the tools," he said. "Get busy."

There is an old two-story frame house next to the shop; it hadn't been painted in 75 years. But that's where Bill's father and mother lived, the old homestead. "My dad's an old-time blacksmith," Bill said, "and I think he can forge you a new main lead for the spring."

While getting the springs off, I snapped all the nuts off the U-shackles that hold the spring to the axle. They were all old and rusted. "No problem," Bill said, "we'll make new ones."

His dad was about 80 years old, and when I showed him the broken spring, he said, "Come on," and leads me out back to this big pile of old rusted parts. He pulled out a lead of a spring, which was obviously too long. He eyeballed it and said, "This one will do."

He cuts it to length and then starts up an old blacksmith forge, black coals and a hand pump to feed it air, so it gets red hot.

He has to make two complete circles on each end of the spring; they had to be exactly the right size and the whole thing had to be exactly the right length or it would never fit. He gets it heated just right and pounds the ends with a big hammer on an equally big anvil.

I'm realizing there probably isn't another man in all of America who can do this. It's a lost art, something from the frontier, horse-and-buggy era.

It comes out perfect. Unbelievably, everything fits like it was made new at the factory.

They had told my wife to take the kids next door to the old house, where the grandma gave them lemonade and cookies, plus a batch of new kittens for the kids to play with.

I'm doing all this work, laying on the dirt, I'm greasy and sweaty from head to foot and it's really hot.

Finally, it's done. I back the car and trailer out of the junkyard. But Bill isn't done with us yet. He's concerned about the spring breaking again, so he goes back to the pile of rusty parts, and he picks up an auto coiled spring. He jacks up one side of the trailer, gets his portable cutting outfit, and cuts the coil spring into just the right size.

He welds it to the frame directly over the axle, then jacks up the other side and does the same, providing us with coil overload springs to take the weight off the trailer. And if that wasn't enough, he welds the old broken spring together with a big extra piece on top so we can have a spare spring, just in case.

It's now about 12:30 p.m. All that work was accomplished in just a few hours.

How can you thank people who are so kindly, they couldn't have treated their own kin any better. In a heat wave everybody is supposed to be short-tempered and irritable, but these people were just overwhelmingly good and kind.

Finally, I said, "What do I owe you, Bill, for all you have done for us?"

He sort of cocked his head and said, "Twenty dollars will just cover it."

I'll remember them all forever.