Bill's Rural Legends
Part 2 - The Helping Hand
Now, when we moved to the farm my wife was totally against it. She hated the mere idea of it – both because she has allergies to everything and also since she grew up in a small town in a rural area and had no desire to go back to that environment. She was in the middle of thinking of a career change because she hated her place of employment, so after much nagging, whining and arguing we decided we would lease the farm to see if it was really what we wanted, and she could work out of state every other month. So for the first three months we lived there she was only really home for 30 days. Well, naturally, she quickly got tired of going back and forth like that so she decided to find a job in the area we settled in.
The first few weeks she was home it was great, but the money we had saved was quickly running out, so at the end of Summer One she took the best job offered to her. It paid daily and was well within driving distance (or so they said). Thus, the day before Thanksgiving she packed her stuff and headed off to the Big City of Boise to get all her stuff, before going on to the hospital she was going to fill in for a couple of days. It took every last cent we had to fill the gas tank to get her to the job, but we figured the cash she'd make would hold us over until she started her regular job in just 2 weeks. As my son and I stood in the driveway, waving good bye to her, I was filled with an overwhelming feeling of "This ain’t gonna end well" - and I was right. About three hours later she called to tell me that she was in Boise, that she had gotten all her paper work done and was about to head out to the temp assignment another two hours north. I relaxed and figured I was worrying for no reason.
The phone rang again. Of course it was my wife. She had only started out of Boise when the car stopped moving forward for no reason. One second it was doing 65 down the highway and the next it was coasting. She gave it gas and the engine would rev, but she was not rewarded with any forward movement. The transmission was gone. Fuck. Now we are broke and she can't even get to the job.
Things worked out so that she actually got to the job site. The car was towed back to Boise and everything would be cool until she was done in three days. Thanksgiving Day arrived and since we had decided to wait with the big traditional meal until she was back, the kid and I op't to have ourselves a big roast, cooked all day in a slow cooker. The day wore on and the roast smelled better and better - our mouths were watering. My son was in the basement playing and I was in my office, either looking at porn or actually working, when I heard a huge bang from the kitchen. I figured it was the kid, on his way through to go outside, so I called his name to ask him what he had dropped. He didn’t answer so I stood up and started into the kitchen, when he came in the front door and asked if I had called him. I said, "Yeah, were you just in the kitchen?"
"No, I was outside playing."
"Oh, shit!'
We ran into the kitchen to see the neighbor’s 29 pound tom cat dragging my roast through a hole he had ripped in my kitchen window screen. I started yelling and ran at him, with the kid right behind me. To no avail. That fat bastard, dragging a three pound piece of meat, beat us. So Thanksgiving dinner was a nice bowl of Veggie beef flavored soup.
The wife finally finished her stint at the hospital up in the mountains and it was time for her to come home, The transmission shop wanted over a grand to rebuild the tranny so I said, "Fuck it, Get on the Greyhound and get home, I'll worry about the car later!” As the time for her to start her regular full time job grew closer, and us still without a car and no savings, we were pretty much fucked, until my buddy Darryl in Salt Lake came to the rescue. He volunteered to take me up to Boise to get my broken down piece of shit, help haul it back home and then let me use his car as a loaner until mine was fixed. He showed up about 1 pm, ready to go, and as an extra hand, Darryl brought his buddy Maxx with him. The car of his that he had brought for me to borrow made me the happiest freak in the world. I gotta explain a little… The car was a 1979 Lincoln Town Coupe'. The past owners’ list was a virtual who's who of the wrestling world: Shawn Michaels, Stone Cold Steve Austin and Mick Foley had at one point or another owned this particular car. Darryl had actually bought the car, with a blown engine, from Shawn Michaels and his Rocker's partner Marty Jennetty for two ludes, a few somas and a couple of valiums. Darryl had lovingly restored the car to like-new condition - except for a cigarette burn in the back seat from a drunken Road Warrior Hawk (we still jokingly refer to the back seat as the Hawk Memorial Burn Site).
Anyways…
We started out to Boise with a dark overcast Idaho sky on our backs. As we passed the half way point to Boise the skies had opened up, unleashing the fury. The snow was flying, Darryl was stoned and I'm popping Xanax like candy to keep from freaking out. We’re negotiating slippery roadways through steep and winding mountain passes in a full-out blizzard, driving a pick up that’s pulling an empty car carrier and with Maxx constantly changing movies in the in-dash DVD player. Scary shit. We finally hit Boise and the worst of the storm seemed to have passed us. We loaded my car on the trailer and hit the road again for home. We stopped outside of Boise, near the Mountain Home Air Force Base, to eat and regroup. At the Wendy's an Idaho State Patrolman told us they are expecting the storm to kick up again and if we didn’t get started soon the roads were gonna be totally impassable. Off we went, and so did the storm. We could imagine the amount of cars that had slid off the road in the dark, plummeting to certain death and disfiguration, but we kept on going. There was no turning back now.
Near the bottom of the mountain there was a small Ford Escort stuck in the middle of the road. Its wheels were spinning but they just couldn’t seem to grab. Darryl, being a nice guy, was worried about a semi or another large vehicle coming down the slope and slamming into the Escort, so we pulled over to the side of the road and all three of us got out to help. Now imagine being stuck in the middle of a snow drift on a dark middle of nowhere highway in the middle of a blizzard, and you’re a pretty 20-something woman, and out of the darkness comes this motley trio of terror… Darryl is 6'7' and weighs about 400 lbs, his buddy Maxx was 6'2 and 280 lbs, and I'm 6' and 250. When she spotted us I'd swear you could hear her scream for miles around. We finally convinced her we were there to help and she calmed down. We managed to push her off the drift and get her on her way.
Back into the truck we went. In almost totally white out conditions we traveled what was usually a two and a half hour drive for seven hours. We finally stopped for gas about 40 miles outside of my town. While fuelling up we noticed that one of the tie-downs on the rear of the car had come loose during the drive. Since I was the smallest of the group I was told to get up on the bumper and stand on it to push it down far enough for the other two to re-hook it again. I climbed up on the slick ice- and snow-covered car and grabbed on to the antenna for support as I was standing there, swaying in the wind. I was shuffling my feet to get a better footing when I heard Darryl yell, "Billy, be careful up there! We don't want you to fa..."
I fell, of course.
When I briefly came to, Darryl was just pulling into my driveway cussing me out for dragging him into a blizzard for a POS car and having to load my knocked out ass back into the truck. When I woke again the next afternoon, nursing a huge goose head on the back of my head and a stiff back, Darryl called to state that his drive home had taken him 6 hours and that he had just walked in his front door. Thank you very much. Click.
Spring finally broke and we were pretty much settled in at the farm. The wife was working and we had a running car again. It was a total piece of shit 1981 Escort, but it got us around until we could afford something better. I decided that it was time to upgrade the livestock and get a few more goats. At the same time I was given a pair of sheep and also started preparing for cows. One of the goats I bought was a big old billy Angora goat. He had the most beautiful set of horns. They extended off of each side of his head about a full foot.
That was lesson one for Summer Two: Never buy something with pointy death mounted on its head. (But that's for another installment.)
A friend of mine wanted to get a couple of baby pigs. They would buy them, pay for their feed and I would raise and keep them at my place since they lived in town. With this arrangement I would get half the meat. So, we took a trip to the big livestock auction 40 miles away. My friends selected the two pigs they wanted and we were just getting ready to leave when the cutest two day old calf came stumbling through the sale ring. I sat in awe when the price didn’t go above 5 bucks! Sensing a great deal, I threw up my hand and bid a whopping 6 dollars! WHOOHOO! I finally got my own cow. Now how the hell do I get it home? My friend was driving his minivan and besides him and me, I had my son there and he had his three daughters as well. So I ran and found a big box to fit the calf in, so he wouldn’t shit all over the van. Problem solved. Off we went to pick up our livestock. Now, there was a huge line of people waiting to pick up their animals.
Tired of waiting, I got out of the van and went over to the wall between the pickup area and pens of animals. I noticed, behind me, a guy trying to load a huge pig into the bed of a pick up (I later found out the pig weighed close to 900 pounds). The pig wanted nothing to do with getting on this truck, so the people working the stockyard got tired of fucking with him and broke out the cattle prods, shocking him into going the right direction. All this served to do, of course, was to piss the pig off and piss him off bad. I stood there and just laughed at what dumbasses these people were. Then I noticed that the pig was coming up the ramp, but when he got to the bed of the truck there was this opening between the tailgate and the open freedom of the parking lot, specifically the section of the parking lot I had unknowingly trapped myself in. The row of cars, trucks and trailers had me totally blocked in on one side and on my other side was a 4 foot high solid wooden wall. Before I could move a muscle, the pig noticed the same opening I had just seen and shot through it like Greased Lightning. Straight at me. He was pissed and bore down on me like a runaway freight train. I dove over the wooden wall, into an animal pen and landed on a sleeping calf, breaking it's neck - but at least I was safe! The pig hit the wall where I had stood only seconds before and it shattered like it was made out of toothpicks. My friend, in an effort, started honking the horn to distract the pig away from me and it worked like a charm. The pig started towards the van with a look of pure evil in its eyes. When it started attacking the van, relentlessly, I think my friends shit their pants. In the matter of less than 2 minutes the pig had bit through the fender and was already gnawing on the tire. The entire fiasco came to an abrupt halt when the owner of the pig figured he had had enough and shot the poor bastard on the spot.
After exchanging insurance info with the gentleman we loaded up and headed for home: a mini van full of traumatized people with 2 piglets in the kids’ arms and with a baby Jersey Calf standing in a cardboard box, confusedly staring out the back window.
To be continued…
by
Barbed Wire Bill
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What is this, 1967?
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