Bob's Corner
From our weekly issue dated November 19, 2008
A funny thing happened on the way to helping a relative stuck in mud last week. Yeah, ha-ha.
The adventure began shortly before 6 last Friday night, not long after I arrived home from the office. This relative phoned to ask innocently, “Want to go for a drive?” Knowing that I might regret the answer, I bravely answered, “Sure!”
Relative said he was up Happy Camp Road, and his vehicle was stuck. When I inquired as to just where he was, off Happy Camp Road, he blithely answered that it wasn’t too far up, and that I’d probably know where to turn if I kept my eyes open. Something like that.
Off I drove, sure that my rescue mission would take not long. Unfortunately, I never realized there were so many side “roads” off Happy Camp Road. But I was game, and took a likely one. Meanwhile, the relative was hiking out, a distance he estimated at 5 miles, so I was supposed to be on the look-out for him.
After taking five or six muddy, rutty side roads, and following each for several miles through overhanging vegetation, I could not find the relative. Cell phone coverage up there is spotty, so I couldn’t always reach him. After some three-plus hours or so, we scored, as he had made it to the main road. He was mud head to toe, as he had tried to remove his vehicle from a boggy, nasty, just-plain-awful water bar trap before phoning for help. I drove past him once, but turned around.
To mercifully make a long story short, which is not always easy, we headed back up the road to find his rig. He admitted that at one point he had been hiking the wrong way, so it had taken longer than he thought to reach asphalt. Believe it or not, we could not easily find his vehicle.
I mean, try this: Drive in the dark on unfamiliar not-in-the-best-shape roads while your passenger struggles to remember where to go. We went this way; that way; some other way; no way. We went down roads that dead-ended; roads where the brush came in like pincers; roads that were so muddy and pot-holed that my all-wheel-drive Highlander in snow-traction mode sometimes slipped a bit. And I had to back out of many a location. Sometimes more than once.
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Several times we went down the same minor side-road off the main side-road, while my passenger strained to recall just where the heck his rig was. And finally we found it. Only had to walk approximately 100 yards over rough, muddy terrain carrying the heavy pulley and stuff I had brought.
And wonderful time, with prayer not forgotten, we got his four-wheel-drive vehicle unstuck. Quite a deal. Only took around six hours from the time I left the house until I got home. But hey, what’s a Dad for? Oops, sorry son, didn’t mean to let the cat out of the bag.
Something like that.
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