On Halloween, I was digging poles out from under a dilapidated tree house near Lexington when my phone rang. It was Brinn. "Once again", she reminded me, I had left her car in the driveway with absolutely no gas in it. She had to stop to fill up, which meant I would have to pick Georgie up from school in the truck (with trailer attached), since she would now be late. As I rushed into town, I noticed that I too was running exceptionally low on fuel (surprise). Not wanting to make a bad situation worse, I decided to risk it, as I'm known to do from time to time. I made it to the school, took a spot in the massive, two lane traffic jam of mini vans and SUV's and waited for Georgie to come running out. Of course, as soon as the traffic cleared and I put the truck in gear, "flub-a-dub-bub", the truck's out of gas. I tried restarting it. I tried banging my head against the steering wheel. I even pulled an old hot rodder trick by turning the engine over with the clutch engaged (which causes the starter motor to move the entire vehicle off the battery) just to get the truck out of the way, which only bought me enough forward momentum to lodge the trailer in a flower bed.
All of this, and yet, not the most embarrassing breakdown I've ever had. Time for a top ten:
Some of these I have to borrow from friends and family, because they're just too applicable.
10: My mom once ran the same vehicle out of gas twice, on the same day.
9: In high school, my friend Jeromey ran his van out of gas on a kinda major highway at 1 or 2AM. Luckily, we had just enough speed to eek over the crest of a hill, before coasting a mile or so downhill, taking a clover leaf exit ramp at 70MPH, scooting into a barren, downtown Leesburg, VA and praying for a station within rolling distance. When we almost lost our momentum coming up a tiny hill, all the passengers waited for the precise moment to jump out of the moving vehicle and run along side of it to get it over the hill. It worked.
8: This one's an all inclusive dedication to the numerous times I've buried truck tires, lodged a trailer, run something over or otherwise broken down in someone's backyard on a chicken coop delivery.
7: Once, while hunting on a friend's 100 acre farm, I discovered upon returning to the Green Machine that she would not start. Thankfully, I had positioned her at the top of a large sloping pasture, worried something like this might have occurred. Regretfully, the grass was a little wet so every time I tried to pop it into gear to jump start the old girl, she just tore huge muddy skid marks down the hill. She wound up stuck at the bottom of the hill, leaving me with a 15 minute walk of shame and a long night of tinkering.
6: The Green Machine once had a crack in the sidewall of one of her tires. I knew it was bad news, but of course I pushed my luck and tried to squeeze a few more miles out of it. One day, I was cruising out in the country with Georgie when the whole thing exploded. I had to hitch a ride back in to Lexington, toting 6-month-old Georgie in his little car seat.
5: I tried to squeeze a delivery in between thunderstorms over the summer. About 4 minutes down the road, Helga Beast ran out of gas. Of course it had to be the stretch of two lane highway through the woods with no shoulder or pullouts, and just as we were about to crest a small hill. No sooner had we rolled to a stop than the heavens opened and poured out the most terrific downpour you've ever seen, bringing darkness with it. I had a 40 minute walk back to the house in the pouring rain, at night.
4: Back when I was teaching, I had a tendency to run a little late in the mornings. Frosty windshields always compounded the problem. I quickly realized the inadequacy of my hasty maneuvering one day; when, after scraping just enough glass to see my way out of the driveway, I was suddenly confronted with a wall of white. The window had refrozen, which is doubly bad due to the intense fog we experience being so close to the river in a mountain valley. I rolled down my window and stuck my head out, watching the yellow lines immediately in front of the truck for guidance. When I thought I had gone about as far as the pullout where we throw our trash in the public dumpsters, I gradually slowed and began veering off the road. I had missed it by about 30 yards, I discovered, as I slammed both passenger side wheels into the drainage pipe marking the entrance to the lot. The sound was not pretty, the result was even worse. Both tires destroyed, one wheel bent, and least of all I was late for school.
3: I recently mentioned this one in passing. A couple weeks ago, I took my friend (perhaps former friend after this excursion) Ron out to a place where a guy we know had a bunch of utility poles piled up. He was letting us take them for free, but the catch was we had to get down the hill behind his house to where they were piled. We surveyed the route, made our plan and plowed down the hill through the brush and leaves. After an hour or so of heavy lifting, we started to talk about how we might get the now heavily laden truck and trailer back up the hill. The best route seemed to be a swing through the woods, out through the pasture to pick up speed, then a daring dash up a steep climb interrupted by a short outcropping of bedrock. It didn't work. After the 2nd or 3rd try, the guy and his wife had gathered at the top of the hill to laugh at our attempts.
Eventually, the motor gave way. I figured we had finally killed Helga Beast, but luckily, it turned out to be something with the carburetor and the engine being overheated. As a last ditch effort, the owner of the house, now at the bottom of the hill with us said, "Oh, we're gonna give it one last try alright... but this time I'm drivin'". He gave Helga Beast all she could handle and I heard her make sounds I didn't know she could make. By the end of it, we had to pull the old girl the rest of the way up the hill with a Toyota. She had completely busted a brake line, totally dislodged the entire exhaust pipe and was sucking for a like a wheezy fat kid during the mile run at school. We drove her home, no brakes, loud as a Harley, wheezing the whole way..
2: This one I already told you, getting stranded in the pickup line at Georgie's school with the trailer over the curb and halfway into the median.
1: This one seriously takes the cake. When I was working at the museum, I had a 40 mile commute each way on I-81. At the time, they were widening some of the long, uphill stretches to 3 lanes. As a result, vast spans of open highway were reduced to two lane tunnels, blocked in on either side by cement barriers. Every half mile or so they threw in some emergency pull-offs; otherwise, there was no way to get off the road if something happened. Of course, something happened. I ran the Diesel (the 1986 Mercedes Diesel I drove for 8 months) out of fuel right smack dab in the middle of one of these death tunnels. As I slowly coasted up hill to a stop, I spied the next emergency pull-off about 30 yards away. I hopped out and started pushing as hard as I could while tractor trailers whizzed around, praying their drivers wouldn't be texting or changing the radio station as they came around the curve. Just as I thought I couldn't push any further, I felt a surge. Two guys had stopped their truck behind me and got out to help push. They then gave me a ride to the gas station, where I was able to fill an old soap bottle with some diesel fuel. A couple of real, genuinely good guys, they wouldn't let me pay them but insisted I pass it on by helping the next guy. Which I did a few days later in nearly the same spot.
In other news, I'm still building a barn. As seen below:
 |
| Unloading some more poles. To get the total I needed, I wound up picking out some natural logs from the firewood yard down the road. I got one monster cedar post and a long, gangly locust log that no one has been able to drive a nail into because it's so tough. |
 |
| Wyoming wanted to help me out. |
 |
| Awkward pose time, Brinn likes the letters and stuff stamped into the poles. |
 |
| When the work is done, it's time for some baby kisses. I know I'm publicly divulging my only weakness, but I have to say, I could have been typing lesson plans for some cranky witch of a boss right now if I hadn't quit teaching. I'll take lifting heavy poles and kissing babies. |
 |
| The walls are coming along. I had a whole crew of guys out here on Saturday, but I'm saving those progress shots for the next post. |
Pole Barn Episode 2-Spiderman from Brinn Willis on Vimeo.
See you soon,
F.W.
Now this is what I call a cool project!! Amazing!?!
ReplyDeleteSaaaWEEET!
ReplyDelete