I used to make the 11-hour drive from Oklahoma to Mississippi to visit home a couple of times a year.  On one memorable trip, m y alternator went out on my car in the middle of nowhere Arkansas.  Daddy stopped what he was doing, drove three hours to meet me (on what should have been a five-hour drive), and then the two of us played "musical cars" all the way home, where we would drive both vehicles until a battery died, then swap them out.  I didn't have to call an expensive tow service, and I learned how alternators worked!  :-D