“No. I really wouldn’t try to make it home. Just find a spot and take it apart, and tighten the nut on the lower drive on the lead axle.”
This is the directive Bill McCreary gave me when I gave him my best impression of the noise the old hay truck started making. A whirring sound from the drivetrain when decelerating with the loaded truck in gear.
I was in Mountain City, Nevada, which is south of Bruneau, Idaho, and north of Elko, Nevada. So once again, we camped for the night in the truck. In the daylight, I found a spot we could back the truck into that was far enough off the road to be safe, sourced a big piece of cardboard to lay between me and the snow, made sure the Chevron station had a pail of gear lube and went to disassembling the suspect rear axle.
I had at least four offers for use of a vehicle if I needed to drive however far I needed to go for parts, from people in the town I’d never met. One fellow said he had the key to the tool room of a miner who’d gone home for the winter and took me to see if anything there was needed. It was not.
“The guys taking this apart for rebuild in a few more years will cuss me, but I’m fixing these threads with the cold chisel so the nut won’t move again,” I commented to Lyle as I finished torquing the nut in place via the same 4-pound hammer and chisel. It turned out to be a permanent repair.
I was moved by the kindness of the locals as they made sure I had what was needed to get going. Just their nature, all day every day.
Years later, closing up shop at the hay export plant in Royal City, Washington, on Christmas Eve, hoping to get in some last-minute shopping in nearby Moses Lake, I heard a thunderous “boom” from the highway. Some poor truck driver had just blown a tire and at that time was 30 miles from a tire store with a service truck.
I found the truck stopped just past my driveway. He’d blown an inside dual on his trailer, had no spare, had no tools to deal with it. He was empty, just trying to make it home for Christmas. I showed him where to turn around and met him back outside my shop. In five minutes, I had his flat inside his trailer and its spot now singled out. The driver tried to pay me, then forced me to take a huge gift basket he had. Said he knew his chances of getting a service truck where he was on Christmas Eve were slim to none – closer to none. I still made it to town before the last stores closed.
Before everyone had a cell phone, I got a call informing me that my wife was stuck in the snow on a notorious uphill curve. I went and found that she’d slid off the road. The one car that had stopped contained half a dozen young Mexican men who were out in the blowing snow trying to push her car back on the road. They had no gloves, no heavy winter coats and were wearing sandals.
I doubt that my Spanish was adequate to thank them. With a tow chain and my chained-up pickup, all were safely back on the road.
My son had a van pass him on I-84 east of Baker City, Oregon. Said he felt, as it passed, that he needed to watch for it. A few miles ahead, he found it stopped just barely off the road. It was below freezing with the forecast for zero that night.
He stopped. It was a young mother and baby inside. She said she’d just called, her husband was going to borrow a rig and come get them from 200 miles away. Ryan, with all his persuasion skills, talked her into riding with him to a 24-hour truck stop where they’d be warm and safe.
Once on the road, she couldn’t get a cell phone signal to call her husband with an update. Half an hour later, approaching the truck stop, her phone rang. An excited then tearful conversation followed. At its conclusion, she told him it was her husband. The Oregon state police had just called him to let him know his van had been struck and demolished by a truck, and he was amazed that she picked up her phone and was safe.
In warmer weather, a fellow was making a rushed trip into Moses Lake for parts. On the other side of the freeway, he noticed a pickup, loaded as though someone was moving, stopped on the side.
On his return, it was still there, so he stopped. It was a young family – guy and his wife and his wife’s mother, who was helping them move. They had a flat tire. They had a spare and a jack, but one of the lug nuts was a lock style, and they had no way to remove it. “I can get it off, but it will ruin that nut,” said their rescuer.
“Break it!” came three voices in unison.
With a big hammer and cold chisel, the first three hits chipped a corner. Then the blows landed in a direction to spin the recalcitrant nut loose. On about the fourth of these blows, the nut spun free. “OOO!” cried out the young husband; “I’ve never seen anything like that before!”
With the spare tire mounted – missing one of six nuts on one wheel – they were on their way.
“The five minutes it took to be a hero was worth it,” said the fellow telling the tale.
With Christmas coming as the big part of December and the emphasis being on doing something special for someone “in the Christmas spirit” upon us …
How about we keep our eyes and ears open all day every day. Someone may be in need, and five or 10 minutes of our time may make us a hero by changing another’s day from a disaster into a slight delay.
Proper respect for Christmas day and all it entails will make how we see and treat those around us the same every day of the year, not just during the Christmas season.
(As a side note – I’ve observed that these same attributes of being aware of those around us and being helpful are part of the many non-Christian religions also.)
