It was the kind of news you never want to hear about a family member.

This past Saturday started like any other weekend: Coffee, newspaper, breakfast with the Full Gospel Men’s group and planning what the rest of the day would hold. I knew that my wife and I would be going to Salemburg later that day so that we could stay with her mom and, in the morning, attend services at Zoar Pentecostal Baptist Church before the church’s annual homecoming celebration that afternoon.

It would be a busy weekend.

Still, there were a few hours before that plan would begin to unfold — a good time to run some errands.

I had a birthday gift for my daughter in Tennessee to mail, and there was a three-page report my wife had done for a class she is taking that I needed to make a copy of. So I hopped into the Southern Yankee — which is the name on the sides of my Jeep Wrangler (I was born in Upstate New York, but have lived a number of years in the South, so that’s what my wife came up with) — and headed for my office in Lumberton.

I checked a couple of things there in preparation for getting the Bladen Journal put together on Monday, and then left.

Or tried to.

Southern Yankee was dead.

There’d been no warning — no coughing or chugging or whatever engines do just before they ... stop. The trip from home to the office had been a pleasant one. I shifted its gears and pushed all its buttons as carefully as I’d always done. And in return, Southern Yankee responded as lively as ever, smoothly moving from one gear to the next; quickly heating up the inside against the cool morning air; and playing the invigorating tune of oldies from 96.5 The Drive.

Outside it was cloudy, drizzly and dreary. But inside, it was heaven.

So what had happened in the few moments between shutting Southern Yankee down at the office and when I came back to turn the key? It was a mystery, but what I did know as I turned the key was that not a single click could be heard coming from the battery. Nor did the radio work or any of the lights. And when I turned the key off, the gauges on the dashboard went to jumping — almost like an eerie reflex from a body that was recently deceased.

Evelyn came out and we put jumper cables between her car and Southern Yankee. For me, this was the equivalent of using defibrillation paddles on a person who had suffered a heart attack. Within minutes, Southern Yankee jumped to life and I said, “Thank you, Lord.” But it was a short-lived rejoicing. As soon as one end of the cables were removed, Southern Yankee died once more.

We tried and tried and tried to transfer the juice of life from my wife’s car to Southern Yankee to no avail.

That’s when we called in a specialist: Our son, Justin.

He arrived on the scene with his medical bag full of tools and a monitor that would tell us how much life was in Southern Yankee’s heart ... um, battery. We sent Evelyn to finish the errands I had started, and Justin began scraping and cleaning around the battery cables and connections. Then we tried jumping it again.

Nothing.

His monitor showed plenty of voltage, so we kept the jumper cables on and FINALLY we got Southern Yankee to start. The day was good again!

I drove all the way back home and, just as I was pulling into the driveway, Southern Yankee just stopped in the middle of the street.

This time, no amount of cleaning and jumping and doctoring could save it. Now it was time to call in the hearse driver: Our other son, Lathan, who came with HIS Jeep and pulled Southern Yankee to Lumberton Tire & Automotive. There, Vernon Allen and his guys took Southern Yankee right inside and then closed up for the weekend. I’d have to wait until Monday for a diagnosis. I knew it would either be a bad heart (battery), alternator (liver) or kidney (starter). In this case, I had my heart set on the heart.

When I went by on Monday to see how Southern Yankee was doing, I found it sitting in the lot — looking shiny and sharp, almost like it was ready for action with a new seventh gear in it. The diagnosis? It was the heart — but the “surgeons” at Lumberton Tire & Automotive had performed a transplant and Southern Yankee had been given another 72 months of life.

Thank goodness.