Kansas Snapshots by Gloria Freeland - August 21, 2026

Houston, I have a dilemma

My time at our cottage in Northern Wisconsin was shorter this year because my sister was arriving for a visit in Manhattan in mid-August. A few days before I was to fly back, husband Art asked if I had any last-minute requests. I thought a moment and then said I'd like one more ride through the national forest.

The tour began the next day in the early afternoon, but I wasn't expecting he'd drive his 43-year-old fishing car. He wanted to see if it was "reliable" for an extended foray. Hmm... My carefree romp through nature suddenly didn't seem quite as carefree!

We were about 30 miles from our place on a gravel road when we started back. Suddenly, I noticed wisps of steam coming from under the hood. When we arrived at one of my favorite places - a small bridge across a pretty river miles from anywhere - the engine temperature light came on.

I wasn't overly concerned because the car has long had an overheating problem. Art carries four gallon-sized containers filled with water in the trunk for just such a situation.

I got out and took photos of the lily pads in the water and nearby wild flowers while he looked under the hood.

Art said, "That explains it. There's a small hole in the top radiator hose."

Not what I wanted to hear! Houston, do we have a problem?

He added water slowly and it quit accepting more after two gallons.

"There could be an air pocket inside, so we may not get far," he said.

As we moved on, we passed a ranger making his once-a-day checks to see if anyone needed help. Art just waved, as we rolled on.

Uh-oh! The light came on again.

But Art calculated we weren’t far from a lake, so he poured in the last two gallons and on we went.

We just made it! I rolled up my pants legs and waded into the lake, keeping my shoes and socks on. A pair of loons seemed puzzled seeing a woman filling containers from the lake.

With all the water available we could ever need, Art let the engine run until all pockets of air were gone. He commented that by leaving the radiator cap loose, no additional water would be ejected.

We arrived back at our cottage without further ado.

From that point on, "Houston, we have a problem" became a sort of humorous line we reached for whenever a real or potential difficulty reared its head. The phrase entered popular culture as a slightly-modified version of the opening statement by a crew member of the ill-fated Apollo-13 moon mission. An oxygen bottle had exploded on the outbound leg of the journey. The gas was used both for breathing and powering energy-creating fuel cells, so losing it was anything but funny. Physics would necessitate the crew complete a half circle around the moon, utilizing its gravity to send the ship hurtling back toward earth. They used the portion of the ship designed to take astronauts to the moon's surface and re-purposed it to get them home.

Their worst-case scenario was far more dire than ours. But being stuck overnight 30 miles into the woods where there is no cellphone service was sufficient for me to invoke it.

A few days earlier, we had a somewhat similar problem. A couple of years ago, the left mouse button - the one most-used - on my laptop failed. Art wanted to see if he could fix it, but not wanting to risk being without my computer, I said, "No," opting to use the touch pad instead.

But three days before our jaunt into the woods, the spacebar and backspace key both stopped working. I wanted it fixed - or a new laptop purchased like the one I had so I wouldn't have to adjust to a new one, but they also want ice water in you-know-where! The prospect of getting a new one and transferring my files in the time before I was to leave seemed iffy. Equally iffy would be finding someone in the north woods to fix a laptop in that time frame.

Out of the blue, Art commanded, "Clear off the table."

Within minutes, he was removing the screws from the laptop's bottom using the tiny screwdriver in his Leatherman - a sort of "Swiss Army Knife." I would be the go-fer as he supplied a play-by-play. He pointed out the function of various parts, thinking I might be interested - which I was, sorta.

Convinced the problem was a bad connection between the keyboard unit and the motherboard, he asked me to find an eraser. Once apart, he used the eraser to clean the contacts on the connecting strip. Then he reassembled the whole thing.

Now not a single key or any mouse part worked!

I felt things were going from bad to worse, but he seemed pleased, feeling it validated his assumption.

He disassembled it again!

He discovered the strip from the keyboard wasn't even in its connector! Inspection revealed the connector lock had failed, and couldn't be repaired. It had a manufacturing flaw and apparently had been barely doing its job for years. Art put the cable in place while I found some packing tape. The tape was then used to hold the connector closed.

Reassembly!

Houston, we have NO problems. Even the long-failed left mouse button worked!

Two more problems arose before I left. A headlamp burned out on Art's car, and two days in a row my flights home from Wisconsin were canceled because of severe thunderstorms. But these were not "Houston-level" problems. Art replaced the headlamp, and the canceled flights resulted in allowing my sister and me to fly the last leg of the journey to Manhattan together!

Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said he couldn't write a concise definition of what was obscene and what wasn't, but added, "I know it when I see it." In a similar fashion, of these four events, for me, the first two easily qualify as Houston-we-have-a-problem ones, while the latter two don't. But I'd be hard pressed to tell you why!