Comments on: Women, the car breakdown, and the cell phone https://thenewneo.com/2009/05/20/women-the-car-breakdown-and-the-cell-phone/ A blog about political change, among other things Mon, 05 Dec 2011 10:36:36 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 By: handgun safe ratings https://thenewneo.com/2009/05/20/women-the-car-breakdown-and-the-cell-phone/#comment-290872 Mon, 05 Dec 2011 10:36:36 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/05/20/women-the-car-breakdown-and-the-cell-phone/#comment-290872 handgun safe ratings…

[…]neo-neocon » Blog Archive » Women, the car breakdown, and the cell phone[…]…

]]> By: Wool ben John https://thenewneo.com/2009/05/20/women-the-car-breakdown-and-the-cell-phone/#comment-110399 Mon, 25 May 2009 11:32:55 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/05/20/women-the-car-breakdown-and-the-cell-phone/#comment-110399 1981? I was nineteen, and working on one of my Dad’s sheep shearing crews in Northern California- We were traveling between jobs somewhere between Susanville and Eagleville or vice versa. My uncle (Dad’s older brother) and I were running one of my Dad’s crews while he was on another job with the other one. I was driving my Dad’s nearly new Chevy like this one: http://rides.webshots.com/photo/2068519900101561550WdFfak

(but green). I was also towing a five-man shearing trailer (which we set up at each job). My brother’s friend Andrew was riding shotgun. A chute for the sheep ran along the whole length of the trailer- when it was setup on a jobsite, a shearer could just reach under the burlap sacks that formed the inner wall of the chute, and grab their next sheep, shear it, then push it out a hole on the other side of the trailer so the sheep could run down a little ramp and go free. (or be wormed or be eaten, whatever happened to them, I don’t really know).

Behind me, my uncle was towing an identical trailer with his brown late ’60’s GMC pickup. At a jobsite, both trailers would be connected together, and a ramp would be provided for the sheep to climb in the trailer and run along the chute.

The road was dusty, it was getting dark, and we were pushing to get to the next jobsite before we lost all daylight. Ahead, through a light haze, I saw a calf begin to wander onto the road from the left. Everything went into slow motion as I jammed on the brakes and skidded up to the calf. I had enough momentum left to knock the calf over, then the truck came to a halt. As I watched the calf spin back towards the side of the road, to my horror I saw my uncle emerge from the cloud of dust about 50 feet behind me. I watched him immediately crank the wheel furiously to the left to avoid smashing into my trailer, which jackknifed his trailer and flipped his truck onto its right side. His truck came sliding to a halt a few feet behind my rig.

With everything still in slow motion, I wrenched my truck door open got onto the road and ran back, past my truck, past my trailer to my uncle’s flipped-on-its-side truck. I figured my uncle was dead, but I scrambled onto his truck, opened the door (up, not sideways, because of the truck’s position), and hollered at my uncle, who was crumpled up in the passenger (down) side of the cab: “Are you all right?” He said, “Whaa …”, so I reached down to help pull him up and out the drivers door. His grogginess was wearing off, and he pushed my arm away and climbed up and out of the cab himself. He was really mad! When his truck flipped, the jackknifing trailer bent the bed of his pickup laterally at about the halfway point, right before it (the trailer) detached and flipped across to the other side of the road onto the shoulder, also ending up on its side. The wheelwell of the truck was bent onto the tire, rendering it inoperative.

Another (mama?) cow came up to the calf casualty and began licking it, but I didn’t pay it much notice.

After surveying the damage, my uncle pried the wheelwell off the tire, told me he was going to town to get help, started his truck, then drove away, the bent pickup bed making him look a little like a mechanized crab as he disappeared into the distance. While all of this was going on, Andrew was taking pictures (?!) It was lonely on that desert road after my uncle left (notwithstanding the company of Andrew, budding Life photographer). The sheep shearers had left the previous job after we did, but they soon caught up to the accident site, surveyed the downed trailer with a little bit of awe, then continued on to the next jobsite. After a few days we righted the trailer and got to the next job.

The calf? It got up and walked away.

Epilogue:
Several months later, a hundred miles away, I was eating in a little cafe on another remote road. I overheard some guys at another table talking about the flipped over shearing rigs. In a way, I felt good because I was so famous, but not so good that I wanted to introduce myself as prime actor in the drama. So I finished my meal and drove away.

]]> By: Eric Fithian https://thenewneo.com/2009/05/20/women-the-car-breakdown-and-the-cell-phone/#comment-110235 Sat, 23 May 2009 09:19:22 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/05/20/women-the-car-breakdown-and-the-cell-phone/#comment-110235 It was 1978 or 1979. I was living in Buena Vista, Colorado, which is approximately 100 miles west of Colorado Springs on US highway 24.
I had made an expedition to the Springs for records or some such, and was headed back to the high country in my 1956 Chevrolet Bel-Air. I had recently talked my mechanic into replacing the old, worn-out generator with a spiffy Delco alternator.
It was rather well up the hill towards Woodland Park, and in the gathering gloom of evening that I noticed that the headlights and the dash lights were decidedly dim. Obviously, something was awry with the charging system. I decided to keep going. It was a winter night (snow on the ground in South Park), but there was a full (or nearly full) moon. I made the trip in fine style, with the headlights off, and not running the fan on the heater.
When I tapped the brakes at the junction with US 285 at Antero Junction, the engine tried to die, so I rolled right through that stop sign.
When I arrived at Greg’s Garage in Buena Vista (right down the street from home), I turned it off, and then turned it back on. The idiot lights were barely visible.
Since that old car had almost no electrical accessories, I took to declaring that I could get it started with 2 “D” cells and a cup of gas!… Quite reliable; I finally sold it in early 1988.

]]> By: Webutante https://thenewneo.com/2009/05/20/women-the-car-breakdown-and-the-cell-phone/#comment-110228 Sat, 23 May 2009 03:53:40 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/05/20/women-the-car-breakdown-and-the-cell-phone/#comment-110228 wow…..

that’s very damn funny,

thanks.

ps. I would’ve been in the canoe with her… having you drag us both across the sandbar….

pps. I have a story about a gar that jumped out of the water into our canoe in the Everglades one time….and it had very big teeth…

]]> By: Baklava https://thenewneo.com/2009/05/20/women-the-car-breakdown-and-the-cell-phone/#comment-110142 Fri, 22 May 2009 18:28:40 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/05/20/women-the-car-breakdown-and-the-cell-phone/#comment-110142 Well. Hope you come back to read this.

My twin sister and I entered into a canoe race at a campground when we were about 14 years old. We had practiced so we were very good at it.

Everybody lined up. The signal to start was given. We raced off! We were supposed to go up the river, around an island and then come back.

When we got to the island there was a little sandbar that everybody had to get out and lift the canoe over and then get back in after getting over it.

We got to the island before anybody else. Our practice paid off.

When we got to the sandbar we jumped out and I stupidly said, “Watch out for the snakes!”

She jumped back in and I had to lift the canoe with her in it over the sandbar…

Needless to say, even though we were first place to the island we didn’t get it back together again.

Serves me right! 🙂

]]> By: Webutante https://thenewneo.com/2009/05/20/women-the-car-breakdown-and-the-cell-phone/#comment-110111 Fri, 22 May 2009 10:48:28 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/05/20/women-the-car-breakdown-and-the-cell-phone/#comment-110111 Baklava….I love to hear canoe stories…..

]]> By: rickl https://thenewneo.com/2009/05/20/women-the-car-breakdown-and-the-cell-phone/#comment-110106 Fri, 22 May 2009 07:00:36 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/05/20/women-the-car-breakdown-and-the-cell-phone/#comment-110106 I was actually on my way to a Dylan concert in Delaware when I broke down on I-95. I still have the unused ticket.

]]> By: Tatyana https://thenewneo.com/2009/05/20/women-the-car-breakdown-and-the-cell-phone/#comment-110075 Thu, 21 May 2009 22:49:57 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/05/20/women-the-car-breakdown-and-the-cell-phone/#comment-110075 You guys all heroes. Stories like that is one of the reasons I’ll never make myself go and learn how to drive.

]]> By: neo-neocon https://thenewneo.com/2009/05/20/women-the-car-breakdown-and-the-cell-phone/#comment-110057 Thu, 21 May 2009 19:25:22 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/05/20/women-the-car-breakdown-and-the-cell-phone/#comment-110057 JohnC: well, it’s not hard to look better than Dylan these days.

]]> By: JohnC https://thenewneo.com/2009/05/20/women-the-car-breakdown-and-the-cell-phone/#comment-110054 Thu, 21 May 2009 18:03:20 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/05/20/women-the-car-breakdown-and-the-cell-phone/#comment-110054 I was a junior in college in Texas and home visiting my parents for a weekend. I remember it as a breezy Sunday night in early November when I started my trek back to my college town and rented house. My yellow-green 1963 VW bug had been coughing and backfiring now and then during the previous week. When it acted up I just did a little tap tap tap on the side of the carburetor with a wrench and then it ran fine until the next time. That worked and that was good enough for me since I had no money. I left my parents house around midnight for the two-hour drive and, being 21, I chose to take the back roads that rimmed a large lake because I liked it. It was a fun, curvy drive on a lonesome road. I gave no thought of course, to the time of night nor to the coughing problem in the VW. I had my Martin guitar in the passenger seat (I even looked a little like Bob Dylan, but better) and a bag of clothes my mom had washed for me and, well . … . I was 21. After about an hour on the road sure enough the VW started coughing and backfiring. I pulled over to do the tapping thing, but when I opened the hood (in the back) this time flames shot upward. I had no fire extinguisher, no blanket for smothering, no nothing except my clean clothes. A pair of jeans didn’t do it. It took only about two minutes in that breezy night for the flames to travel to the back seat and everywhere else inside and outside. All of a sudden I was on the side of the road with a totally burned up car, stranded and no way home and nobody in sight. Finally, a car passed by without stopping. Apparently he/she/they drove to the next town and called the cops. (This was during the early 1970s and no cell phones of course). The cops and a firetruck arrived, but way too late to do anything for my car. The cops called for a tow truck and also called my father via a radio who got out of bed and came to my plight. He paid the tow truck driver in cash to take me and my completely burned up VW to my place which was still an hour away. I’m not sure I ever thanked my father for that. He’s 88 now. I’ll thank him next time I see him. That drive wasn’t fun when it was happening, but I can’t keep from grinning when I look back and see myself scrambling to put the fire out and knowing what my feelings and thoughts were the time. I suppose I was lucky, but it was a different time then and it was in the backwoods of Texas which might have made a difference. I still have my Martin guitar and I’m still better looking than Dylan.

]]>