My Karoo breakdown story involves two cars, a bakkie - containing assorted adults, children and camping gear - and a Venter trailer.
We were travelling in convoy through the night, planning to reach Britstown by 6am when petrol stations opened for business. This was in the bad old days of fuel rationing. And no cellphones. And the cars we could afford didn't have air-conditioning.
At 4am, somewhere between Hopetown and Britstown, one of the cars, a Peugeot 505 with a five-speed gearbox, broke down. Because of petrol rationing, there wasn't much traffic and it took ages for another car to turn up.
One of our party eventually got a ride to Britstown, where the petrol station, along with the dorp, was still slumbering.
When the service station opened, a truck was sent to tow the Peugeot, accompanied by one car, the bakkie, a Ventertjie and a motley collection of tired, grumpy holidaymakers.
The mechanic quickly determined that the Peugeot's gearbox couldn't be repaired, at least not in Britstown. He took our friend to a scrapyard that contained a collection of vehicles written off in terrible accidents.There, among the crushed cars and trucks, stood a damaged Peugeot 504 with a perfectly serviceable four-speed gearbox.
In just a few hours, the broken gearbox was replaced and we set off again.
We had a lovely holiday, albeit one 14 hours shorter than planned.
There is a delicious footnote to this story. When we returned to Johannesburg, my friend decided his car needed a service - oblivious to the fact that if it had been serviced in the first place, we might have avoided the Britstown breakdown.
The service was duly executed. When he collected the car, however, he was hesitantly informed that his car had somehow "lost" a gear. He took the opportunity to jump up and down, demanding his missing gear!
Those were wonderful times. I still love travelling through the Karoo, although more sedately. And these days we take the time to overnight on sheep farms, instead of driving through the night to reach our destination as soon as possible...