“Rudolph,” the white truck with the red fiberglass hood, and I were northbound on U.S. Highway 93 between Ely, Nevada, and Twin Falls, Idaho, running bareback, or bobtail, after dropping a pair of van trailers at Kennon’s new hay ranch by Nyala, Nevada. It was quite the move from central Washington state.
We had started with running two trucks together, moving a lifetime’s accumulation of haying and farming machinery 850 miles away. As the weather warmed and signs of green plant life started to emerge from the winter, I had convinced Kennon that he needed to stay in Nevada and get to farming. His remaining crew in Idaho and myself were able to load the last of his machinery without him and run solo the remaining trips.
The two van trailers, or “wiggle wagons,” had been his household goods. Some trips we’d unload the trailers. On the later trips, running solo, I would usually drop the loaded trailers and grab an empty set of B-train flatbeds and return.
Touching base with Kennon on the above bobtail trip, I told him that he had one more thing to add to his list of things to be thankful for. Running at every bit of the posted 65-miles-per-hour speed limit on mostly dry pavement and with falling snow blowing across the roadway. …
A full-grown antelope had run onto the highway directly in front of Rudolph and I, stopped, then in what seemed like inches before a collision, reversed and jumped back the way it had come from. He asked if I was sure that it wasn’t the red-eyed monster (hallucinating due to lack of sleep)? I assured him that I knew when all the tricks of staying awake were wearing out and it was time for a nap.
We lost track of the number of truckloads it took to get him moved, guessing about 30. On the last trip down, I hauled my good old purchased-on-a-whim-at-an-auction 1993 Geo Tracker, which I then drove home. Kennon counted it as a massive blessing that we had not so much as a minor incident on all those trips.
The summer my wife and I got married, we left Minnesota and stopped at Watertown, South Dakota, and found a justice of the peace to marry us. Headed west to continue my college days but with time to let my family in Idaho meet the new family member, a 2-inch hose on the cooling system of my 1965 Ford sprang a leak.
We were somewhere in the northeast corner of Wyoming when it occurred, along with the high temperature warning light failing. My first indication that there was an issue with the car was when it started running rough, then quit running. I got it safely to the side of the road and another car stopped right behind me. He said he’d been noticing a bit of a steam trail for a couple of miles, but in the hills his compact Ford Falcon and its thrifty little six-cylinder engine hadn’t been able to overtake my 390 V-8.
Opening the hood, the 2-inch hose between the intake manifold and the water pump was still puffing steam. The fellow who stopped said he’d been on this kind of rodeo before and advised just leaving it to cool down on its own. Said he was taking his expectant wife to a doctor’s appointment in the next town, about 30 miles away.
He said that if we could ride along while he dropped his wife off, he could take us to a parts house to get a replacement hose, then he’d take us back to our car. No one else had stopped. Across the roadside fence was a small house with no vehicles nearby. There was a water well with the hand pump in the yard, and a woman, dressed as from the last century, was pumping water to fill a container.
We accepted the ride. He dropped off his wife, then took us to a parts store where I purchased the replacement for the recalcitrant hose. I offered to pay him since that was a long drive. He smiled and said his good little Falcon was getting him close to 30 miles per gallon, and to not worry about it.
It was a difficult hose to replace. The stranger stayed and helped. I crawled across the fence and got some water. The rest of the cooling system didn’t leak. Surprisingly, the car started right up. It ran with an audible hiccup that wasn’t there before, but it ran. An interesting start to almost 56 years of marriage.
And it goes on. From being thankful to have the means to help others to thankfully being helped. And then there’s those “aha!” moments like when we realized that none of our children needed an orthodontist. Many reasons to be thankful every day.
