Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
We’d just loaded a dozen 4×4 bales from Jim McDonald about 10 minutes before the ominous pop and subsequent rumble of a blown tire alerted us. Brian handled his Ford F350 well, keeping the 28-foot gooseneck on the road before stopping at the entrance to a field along Riverview Road.
It was late in the afternoon. The sun was just a few degrees above the Wind River Range. At that time of day when the temperature suddenly drops 10 degrees in just a couple of minutes.
We were alone with 10 tons of hay on the side of a road with not only a blown tire, but a destroyed rim. The rim looked a lot like a bottle cap. We were alone for less than a minute. Chuck Hoelzen, a former business partner with Mike Lieberman from our corporation TL Computing, stopped first. He assessed the situation and said, “I’ve got a backhoe, it’ll take me 10 minutes to get here.”
Brian checked the Onyx app on his cell phone to see who owned the property behind the gate to see if we could leave the trailer overnight. We didn’t have to.
As Chuck was speaking, Paul Crofts pulled up in his white pickup with two dogs in the bed, smiled and said, “You’ve got a mess.”
He then offered to bring his backhoe over from just a couple of hundred yards down the road. We accepted his gracious offer.
“Does everyone have a backhoe out here?” I asked Chuck.
“Pretty much,” he said.
Paul pulled out a 20-ton jack, and a cordless impact wrench.
Brian’s truck and trailer weighed 14,000 pounds when we stopped to get a pre-load weight at the Co-Op earlier. Add another 20,600 pounds of second-cutting alfalfa, and you had a load.
With Paul’s backhoe loader chained to the trailer and Brian working the 20-ton jack, the trailer didn’t budge. I unhooked Paul, and he took off the four bales at the end of the trailer, running them across the road to his place.
The trailer lifted with three-and-a-half tons taken off the bed. We put the spare on, noted the tire next to the blown one that lost chunks of tread during the blowout, and made it to town.
I met Paul on Friday morning at sunrise. He loaded the four bales on the trailer with three new tires.
“You don’t owe me anything,” Paul said. “It’s just being a good neighbor.”
Isn’t that statement one of the big reasons we put up with the isolation, the long cold winters, the lack of amenities that city dwellers think are necessities, and the long distances between places?
“You don’t owe me anything.”
A few years ago, I had a stock trailer with a sketchy hitch that would sometimes pop loose when it was empty and you’d hit a bump. I filled up at the Maverick on West Main and turned left. That section of road was undergoing some minor construction and I didn’t see the six-inch drop from the curb. I missed it with the front end but the right rear tire caught the edge and the trailer popped loose from the hitch, snagging the safety chains.
I rolled to a stop, blocking the westbound lane.
By the time I walked back to the trailer, two guys had stopped and were running towards me.
The trailer was heavy. The tongue weight was around 400 pounds. I could lift it easily with the jack, but traffic was backing up. A couple with New York plates were laying on the horn just seconds after I stopped.
With the help of these two guys, the three of us lifted the hitch back on the ball and I was on my way. One of the guys gave the New Yorkers a friendly grin, and an appropriate (my wife would say inappropriate) gesture.
All was well.
The idea of “paying it forward” came to mind.
One winter’s day, a storm hit the county. I was still teaching at Shoshoni and commuting with the late Jim Yager. I had a 1984 Datsun 4×4 pickup at the time. It had a top end of only 68 mph but the little beast handled ice and snow like a champ.
I threw a chain into the bed before we left town, thinking there might be a car or two that slid off the icy road.
There were six. Jim and I systematically pulled a couple of cars from Thermopolis, three of our students and one fellow teacher out of the drifts. It was all in a day’s work for a couple of Wyoming guys.
The first case I can remember as an adult of coming to the rescue for someone was a long time ago, I was barely an adult, just 20 years old. My roommate, Ray Davis, a Crow kid from South Dakota, and I were cross-country skiing in the Snowy Range. We came over a rise and ran into an exhausted older guy (Ok, he was maybe 45, but we were kids and that seemed elderly) dragging a nice 4×5 mule deer buck.
The guy was almost spent. He told us his truck was about a half mile and three small ridges away. What the heck. We took off our skis, handed them to the exhausted hunter, and each grabbed an antler.
In about 20 minutes we were at his truck, we threw the buck in the bed, took our skis and shook hands. He tried to give us $20 a piece, but we refused. That’s not the Western Way. When someone needs help, you help them.
The generosity of people amazes me.
Just after my first knee replacement, I had a blowout north of town. As I hobbled back to take down the spare time, a big, dual-tired John Deere tractor rolled north. The spare tire wouldn’t drop no matter how I manipulated the jack handle. I managed to get down under the truck on my one good leg.
As I looked for the problem, the sound of a tractor grew louder, then I saw a pair of legs standing by my feet.
I crawled out, and Eric Donelson was smiling at me, “Having a little trouble, coach?” Eric said.
I explained the situation. Eric crawled underneath the truck, slid the handle into place, and the spare tire dropped.
Brian showed up, grabbed the jack and the two of them changed the tire. I appreciated the help.
I like to eat lunch outside on our covered deck in the summertime. One early afternoon I noticed a white van on North 8th West parked below our place.
It didn’t move for a while. I took out my spotting scope and saw a man working on the front end of the van, with a woman and two small children standing beside him.
I drove down to see what was going on. He was an amateur mechanic and told me it was something with the front driveshaft.
He was traveling from Minnesota to New Mexico for a job and had just enough money for meals and fuel.
He said the van could be towed so I pulled him down to Napa Auto Parts. The part was $75. I paid for it and asked the counter guy about someone with tools who could help him. There was a guy, just three blocks east beside the old women’s shelter. The counterman called him. I towed him to the guy and they went to work.
I drove by two hours later to see how they were doing and the local guy said, “He left about 15 minutes ago.”
We sometimes live on the wings of angels. He was working on faith with his family and an older vehicle traversing the long distances of the west.
But he was in a good place. “You don’t owe me anything.”