Category: Snowbird

There’s No Law Against Dumb

The trailer we were pulling  was grossly overloaded, swaying side to side down I-85 from Charlotte into South Carolina and then right on I-26 toward the mountains.

The constant tugging back and forth on the rear end of the Ford Bronco had given me a queasy feeling –that trailer was trying to pass us.  At then, at the bottom of a long hill west of Spartanburg, it did.  It jackknifed into the inside lane and banged into the side of the Brother Dave’s Bronco, next to where I was sitting. Through my window I saw the trailer skidding sideways down the interstate.

And then, just like that, it turned the Bronco around.  The trailer was in front, pulling us. We were going backwards down I-26.

* * *

The cabin at Snowbird
The cabin at Snowbird

The four of us had loaded the trailer with everything we needed to finish building a 512-square foot cabin at Snowbird, in the mountains of North Carolina. Not the foundation and floor, we had already built that, and not the porches either, we added them later. But we had everything else–studs, plywood, dry wall, windows, doors, shingles, nails — the whole 40 yards.

We had already run into one problem, shortly after midnight when we stopped for gas south of Charlotte and discovered one of the four trailer tires was flat. Another tire had nails in it but hadn’t gone flat yet and a third tire had dry rot.

We had limped back Charlotte at 45 mph, hoping we didn’t lose another tire and hoping a sleepy truck driver doing 70 didn’t run us over.  When we got back to Charlotte we unloaded the cabin, waited for the tire store to open, bought new tires, reloaded, and headed for the mountain.

***

After jerking the Bronco around backwards the trailer quickly slowed, drifted off onto the shoulder of the interstate, and stopped.  Lucky for us no one was  hurt and damage to the Bronco and the trailer was minimal.

A  South Carolina state trooper, who happened to be passing, stopped to find out why we were parked on the shoulder of I-26 headed the wrong way. He did not write us a ticket. Maybe the trooper was in a hurry, or maybe there’s no law against dumb.

Dave headed for Asheville to rent a straight bed truck –we needed something bigger and heavier than the Bronco– while we unloaded the trailer again.  When my brother got back he discovered he couldn’t hook the trailer to the truck because the ball on the truck’s trailer hitch was the wrong size.  Dave’s solution?

He chained the trailer to the truck. 

But our troubles weren’t over.  We were only a mile or so from Big Rock, which was as far up the Sassafras Ridge  as we could go pulling a trailer, when Dave took a turn too wide at a creek crossing and dropped the right side trailer wheels off the road.  For the third time in 30 hours we unloaded and reloaded the cabin.

* * *

A few days later Brother Pop and a buddy of his went up there and carried the cabin up the hill at Big Rock on their shoulders. When it was wet, that that hill was slick on slick, impossible to go and up and down in a two-wheel drive pickup.

When I talked to him after he got back to Alabama Pop told me that none of the building material we had left by the side of that logging road had been stolen, thank goodness, but that’s not what I told Dave.

When I call Dave I told him to brace himself:  someone had stolen the trusses.  Dave didn’t say a word, but I heard a loud noise I couldn’t identify — he had thrown the phone down, hard, hitting himself in the foot.  I was almost afraid to tell him the good news:  “Dave, it’s OK.  April Fool!”

He was not amused.

Postscript:

That I-26 incident was not Dave’s last trailer rodeo.

Later on, getting ready for another trip to Snowbird, he pulled that same trailer to a service station to get the tires aired up.   I have tell you: I was impressed. Dave is not real careful about that sort of thing. Maybe you can teach old dog. Or maybe not.  On the way back to his box shop that trailer tried to pass us again.

I look out the window of Dave’s Bronco and there it was, beside us on a on a long straight section of Brevard Street in Charlotte, a two-lane street. Dave had not secured the trailer to the hitch and now it was driving itself.

The trailer pulled up almost even with us and then veered left into a gravel parking lot and smashed into a car.   Again, no one was injured.  The car was heavily damaged but the trailer wasn’t so Dave hooked it up, correctly this time, and we went to Snowbird.

Coming Friday: Just Brown And Serve

 

Run Off The Mountain

My wife, Donna, and I took our three boys to Snowbird, in the mountains of North Carolina, to tent camp for first and only time in the fall of 1974.

I drove our car as far up the mountain as I could, to a place I call “Big Y,” at the juncture of the left and right forks of Juanite Branch.  I couldn’t go any further up that old logging road, too many rocks and ruts, so I parked and we walked the rest of the way, about a mile and a half, two miles, loaded like pack mules.  We went right back to where Brother Dave, my oldest son, Bo, and I had spent a lovely couple of days camping under a blanket of stars in March 1974.

This weekend wasn’t so lovely. The sky was overcast, threatening rain. It was cold, too. A lot like Donna’s temperament that day. And both were about to get a lot worse.

We didn’t have any real camping gear, just stuff we had around the house. A four-year-old pup tent that Bo got for Christmas when he was six, a tent, we were about to discover, that leaked. Blankets, no sleeping bags. A cot. An iron skillet. A folding chair, the kind you lay out on at the beach. And, of course, no backpacks.

It began to drizzle as Bo, 10, and Mark, 8, and I set up the tent. Donna got inside right away, out of the rain, and laid down. Jack, who is mentally handicapped and was still in diapers, laid beside her.

The tent leaked on her. So did Jack.

 I was anxious to get a fire going.  Maybe we could toast some marshmallows. Lift everyone’s spirits. Besides, it was getting colder.

The boys and I quickly rounded up some firewood, dead tree limbs.  But when time came to start the fire,  I couldn’t.  I had forgotten to bring matches.

Now that’s a problem!

Thank goodness, it was a problem I could fix.  There were probably some matches in the car somewhere and it was only three, four miles down there and back. It was just a question of doing what had to be done.

I left Bo, our 10-year-old son, there to guard Donna and Jack  while Mark and I walked back down the mountain to the car to get some matches.

Part 2

There were no matches in the car and I looked everywhere, carefully.

So I made a torch.  I wrapped an old shirt I found in the trunk around a stick, tied it snugly, and soaked it in oil. The cars we drove in those days all burned a lot of oil so we always had a couple of quarts in the trunk.

My plan: light the torch with the car’s cigarette lighter, jog back up the mountain to our camp, and light the camp fire.

But the car’s cigarette lighter wouldn’t light the torch. I know that’s hard to believe, that a piece of metal glowing red hot wouldn’t light cloth soaked in oil, but it wouldn’t.

I needed a new plan.  I needed gasoline.

I found a string, dipped it into the gas tank, squeezed out the excess gas, and tried to light the string with the car’s cigarette lighter. It wouldn’t light either.

 I was really ticked off at this point, and even more determined.  One way or another I was going to get a flame.

I dipped the string back in the gas tank, soaked it, pulled it out, and squeezed a drop of gas onto that red hot lighter. There was no big flame, no small flame, no nothing.  Just a sizzling sound as the gas cooled off the glowing lighter, as if I had poured water on it.

And then I prayed for matches.

And when I finished praying I look in the glove compartment again and, lo and behold, there was pack of matches, in plain sight.

[No, I can’t explain it. But I’m telling you, I’m not making this up.]

Mark and I hustled back up the mountain and lit the fire. Good thing too. It was nearly dark when we got there and starting to rain harder.

Part 3

I had already taken off my poncho and thrown it across the tent to keep the rain from leaking on Donna and Jack.  I was getting wet but the good thing about that is you can’t get but so wet.

Someone had left some plastic, draped over a stick frame at the camp site, and that helped some. You couldn’t stand under it and breath at the same time because the sides came down a foot or two and trapped the smoke from the fire. But the boys could squat down and stay reasonably dry or they could lay down on the rain soaked ground and make the best of it.

I stood in the rain, feeding the fire all night, keeping it going.

Donna lay on the cot with Jack praying for the rain to stop. Eventually her prayers were answered and it began snowing.

For most of the night Donna and I passed a watch back and forth, checking and rechecking the time.

The boys caught a little shut eye and I finally went to sleep myself, standing with my back to the fire. I woke up when I realized I was on fire, the flames coming up one leg of my pants. I swatted it out. I was wearing cowboy boots so it didn’t burn off much skin, a piece about the size of a silver dollar on my calf, above the top of my boots. I wanted to see how bad I was burned  but the  cheap flashlight I brought had quit working.

It was a long night but a short morning.

We had not eaten supper on the mountain and we didn’t eat breakfast either.  When it was gray light, barely light enough to see, Donna came out of that tent with her mind made up.

“Jack and I are going to the car,” she said, and without another word she took him by the hand and headed down the hill.

I could see that that woman’s mind was made up. We followed her. We had been run off the mountain.

Postscript:  Santa Claus brought me, Bo, and Mark zero degree sleeping bags for Christmas — Donna said she was done with camping on the mountain.  We’ve never been run off again.

Coming Monday: Foot In Mouth