Some people just don't know any better.
I was once helping a couple of local teenagers with my M35A2 and ran across
just such an individual, actually a couple of them. The kids had been out
raising a little ruckus with their jacked up 4x4, and ran off a dirt road,
in an uphill curve, down into a 30 to 40 foot gully. They missed all the
trees, but had no way to get it back out. Too scared to call their parents
for help or a wrecker.
Some of their friends had been trying to pull them out with another pickup
without luck, and they just outright asked me for help at a service station,
where I was fueling up. We had my deuce positioned diagonally across this
road, backed to the edge, with a chain through the pintle hook to the
stranded truck. The road was being blocked by the friends on both sides
above and below, and stopping traffic. A couple of loud mouthed, middle
aged no-brainers drove around and past the guys above my location and
verbally and rudely insisted on us getting out of their way! I simply told
them to just push the deuce out of the way if they could, or wait until we
were done. He actually started to take a go at the front axle, but stopped
and backed up, and tried to squeeze between the front end and the ditch
bank. He climbed his right front up on the bank and as he made a move
forward, his truck slid sideways onto the end of the deuce's front bumper.
Well, he was hung. And he was tee'd off. And he was screaming and
shouting. He insisted that I move my truck, I told him that he got his
truck stuck on my bumper, and he could dammed well get it off himself, or
wait until I was done, like I had told him in the first place. The entire
time, he was still behind the steering wheel, cause the bumper was now
wedged deep into the drivers door. He became more enraged, threw his Ford
into gear and rocked it back and forth trying to get loose! He cut a ragged
gash into the door, the cab, and the length of the long wheel base truck by
the time he got free. He drove off throwing dirt and gravel all over, as he
barely missed the boys down below.
The boys and I continued our efforts. I pulled forward about a foot and
snapped the first chain that the boys had been using. I backed up and got
out my own 1/2" towing chains and rehooked to the truck. I found that the
transmission crossmember was firmly wedged between rocks. We used a
highlift jack to raise the truck up and free of the rocks, and placed a
short 2 x 12 board to act as a skid beneath the crossmember.
When we got back up to the road, we had a sheriffs deputy sitting there with
the two loud mouthed idiots. They were insisting that I had run into them
with my deuce, and demanding satisfaction. I never got to say a word, the
teenagers flew into telling the story of how it had happened, some onlookers
joined in with their versions of it, and told how the fools had nearly
driven down one of the other boys. The deputy still hadn't said a word to
me, walked to the front of the truck, picked some shreds of sheet metal
off the back corner of the bumper and commented that the paint wasn't even
scratched on it. He looked at the torn up ditch and bank, and he looked at
the loud mouths truck and simply said, "You'd have been better off waiting."
He then added another insult by turning to me and asking whether I'd like to
press charges against them for the damage done to my truck! I told him that
my truck wasn't hurt, but asked whether it was possible to have them locked
up for their own self protection. Everybody laughed good, and the deputy
told them that they should leave now.
The deputy hung around while I pulled the pickup up on to the road. And
asked how I had gotten into this situation. I told him that adventures like
this make life interesting. When he asked whether the driver ever thanked
me, I had to admit to him that he didn't, but his friends did. Figure that
one out!
So, some people just don't think, don't know any better, and are ignorant to
the extreme, all in the same day!
HMV content: the deuce never spun a wheel, never broke idle, and was a hero
to one, and a dangerous obstacle to another.
John Doherty
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jan 02 2001 - 23:13:24 PST