Someone Who Knows About Cars - HELP!

[SamIam]

OK, today I was driving to the library to meet my friend Jim. When I got there, the truck suddenly stopped responding to the excelerator. It wouldn't run in any gear even though I had my foot pressed all the way down to the floor. I also had the AC and CD player going - not that I can see how that would make a difference.

So Jim looked under the hood and he said there was a wire that wasn't pulling on the two parts which allow the gas to get to the excelerator (he told me their actual names, but I forget them). When he manually moved the parts, my engine started to rev again, but then quit when he took his hand off the parts.

Jim told me he really didn't know enough about cars to tell me what was wrong, so we went into the library to see if we could get enlightenment from a Chilton's Manual. Well, we found the right manual, but nothing in it seemed to address my truck's problem.

We went back out and Jim was going to drive me home, but I said, "Let me try it one more time. Maybe it healed itself." Jim had a good laugh over that, but I got in and tried anyway. And the excelerator worked just fine and I was able to start the truck! I did not have the AC or CD player on for whatever that's worth.

So, is this a symptom of some horrible failure soon to come in the truck's future or is it some simple thing that someone who knew a little about cars could fix for me. I have no money to take it in to the mechanic, so I am hoping that some clever person here can tell me what to do.

Here's a couple of pix of the engine. The red arrow points to the wire, and the yellow arrows point to the parts that Jim was able to manually press to get the truck to excelerate.

Sorry to be so stupid, but help!