Broken-down car has put Macon waitress in a bind

Editor's note: The Reindeer Gang is an annual holiday feature about people and families in need. Donations to Dominique Jackson can be made through Goodwill Industries of Middle Georgia, 5171 Eisenhower Parkway, Macon, 31206. For information, call 703-0450 or email adoh@goodwillworks.org.

One drizzly morning in the middle of last month, a friend dropped Dominique Jackson off in her south Macon driveway.

Jackson has lived there on Dewey Street, not far from the bottom end of Houston Avenue, since June.

That morning she had caught a ride back from an auto-parts store and from picking up her $80.07 paycheck for two weeks of work at the downtown restaurant where she waits tables.

As the friend drove away, Jackson reached into a plastic shopping bag and pulled out a blue bottle she'd bought at the auto-parts shop.

She sat the bottle on the trunk of the dead 2000 Buick LeSabre in her driveway. One of the car's back tires was flat. The thing hadn't been driven in weeks.

"I have a leak in my engine," Jackson said.

One of the rods was loose, she said. She couldn't afford to fix it.

The blue bottle was a container of head-gasket sealer.

Later she would pour it in and pray the car would crank -- or stay cranked.

When she started driving the Buick three years ago, it had 181,000 miles on it. Now it has 250,000.

She used to commute from where she was living in Atlanta to a sales job working 4 p.m. till midnight at Geico in Macon.

She later moved to Macon in fall 2013.

"I was looking for a change of scenery," said Jackson, 30, a single mother of two boys and two girls.

Her children range in age from 5 to 14.

Soon after coming to town she lost her job.

For the past year she has worked as a server at H&H Soul Food. She earns $2.13 an hour plus tips.

Jackson has a wide smile and a radiant voice that still rings of the Bronx, New York, neighborhood where she grew up.

She spent a year in the Army. She was honorably discharged, she said, because of a personality disorder.

"I hate that I had to get out," she said.

She moved away from her native New York at age 15 to be with her mother in Atlanta. By the time she was 17, Jackson was on her own.

Now in Macon, she has attended Helms College, a culinary school on the city's west side. But since her car broke down and her father died, she hasn't gone to class. She hopes to return in January, graduate in spring and find a job.

One day she'd like to open a home for pregnant teens, a safe harbor for young mothers.

But she needs a car.

"It's kind of put me at a stopping point," Jackson said.

"Right now I'm paying for rides. I'm taking cabs. I'm taking the bus. My daughter, she's in the band at school and it's difficult because I can't go and pick her up when she needs to be picked up."

Jackson has tried to revive her old LeSabre.

When she can drive it, the engine knocks.

"Mind you, my check is $80, that head gasket (sealer) was $40," she said.

"The price it will cost to get (the car) all the way back right, I might as well get another vehicle."

The only assistance she and her children receive comes in the form of food stamps.

She has no local kin to lean on.

"Me and my children," Jackson said, "are the only family we have."

Meanwhile, that $40 blue bottle of gasket sealer hasn't helped.

Her old Buick won't budge.

This story was originally published December 3, 2015 at 5:52 PM with the headline "Broken-down car has put Macon waitress in a bind ."