Dairy Report: LeVan Speaks His Mind

Self-described Cheese Czarina Lisa Jacobs of Jacobs Creamery reminds us that being a farmers' market vendor is not all tea and crumpets. Remember, you can find her booth at the PSU, Hollywood, Milwaukie, Hillsdale, King, Eastbank and Lake Oswego farmers' markets.

This week LeVan du Fromage (similar to photo, above) and I had a real bonding moment. Like when you go through a catastrophic event with someone, we are a little more bonded together now after we got through our episode of being stuck on the side of the freeway Sunday night at 11:15.

In all fairness, he gave me warning on Saturday after the markets when the temperature gauge when through the roof and steam was streaming from the engine. I stopped where I was and called my Dad [Michael Jacobs of The Smokery].

"Dad, quick! I need two gallons of water!"

"Lisa, its OK, I already made some Gatorade and you can have some when you get here."

"Dad, I'm stuck behind Fred Meyer! I need water for LeVan...steam is coming out of the engine and green stuff is peeing out the front end!" (It appeared that LeVan doesn't like the hot weather, and chose this particular time to declare he had a hole.)

Then Sunday night as I was heading home after six markets and the final unload, sort, count and cheese-making I was not as good-humored when the incident happened again, seeing as my Dad was now in Vegas, my ex-boyfriends were in another state and Peter was all the way back in White Salmon. And unfortunately I can't tilt my cab forward to get to the radiator myself.

So I called the police with the idea that they would help, at least blocking traffic from hitting me and LeVan and secretly thinking that I could get them to help me tilt the cab. Officer Bailey was an "I follow the book" kind of officer (go figure) and needed a lot more cajoling than I initially thought. He wanted to call AAA and I wanted to get my cab tilted so I could add water and get home. Finally I explained that AAA doesn't cover box vans, so I won.

As it happens he was more frightened of the engine than I was, but I told him what to do and he listened. So thanks to Officer Bailey and my 5-gallon hand washing station, I had enough water to get me home. The next day LeVan went to the doctor and seems to be much better after having a new heater core installed.