My Rules

On this trip to Snowbird, our hideaway in the mountains of North Carolina, Brother Pop and I were alone, headed for the cabin in his Ford Ranger pickup.

He had tried several times to get his truck to go into four-wheel drive but it just wouldn’t go. That was OK at first.  But when we got to Big Rock, a little over half a mile from the cabin, he should have just parked it. It had been raining some and when that hill got the least bit wet it was so slick you had to have a four-wheel drive.  That’s all there was to it.

But Pop was determined to drive his truck to the cabin, so he tried again and again to get up the hill.  And the more he tried, the madder he got.  His tires were smoking, and so was he.  I got out, away from his truck, away from him.

Pop kept on trying.  He floor-boarded it.  His tires were screaming.  I just about couldn’t see his truck anymore,  hidden in a  puff of blue smoke coming off his rear tires.

Chuck, top, and Mike Stith
Chuck, top, and Mike Stith

Finally, finally, he gave up and we went on the cabin riding double on an ATV.   Pop didn’t like leaving his truck at Big Rock, not one bit.  He took it personally . He said when his boys, Chuck and Mike, got there that truck was coming up the hill. He made it sound like they were going to beat his truck senseless with a tire tool and drag it up the hill if they had to.

His sons and a couple friends got there the next day and ran into one of my sons, Mark, on the way up.  Mark is the one who got in the Pop’s truck and drove it up the hill to the dam, just below the cabin. Not taking anything away from Mark, but the road had pretty much dried out.  

Lucky for Mark he stopped at the dam and got out to check out the pond and Mike got behind the wheel, only about 50 yards and one enormous mud hole from the cabin. 

He didn’t make it.

Back and forth Mike drove that truck through that mud hole. He would drive it up the hill, guys pushing, tires spinning, slinging mud everywhere, almost there but not quite.  And when the truck could go no further it would slide backwards, back into that mud hole.

On one of those slides back down Mike opened the driver’s door so he could stick his head out and see better. But he was too close to a tree and when the truck slid by the tree it caught the driver’s door and bent it backwards.

Bummer!

Anyway, they finally got the truck out of the mud and up that last little hill and Mike parked it at the cabin. A couple of them pushed on driver’s door, bent it back around, until they finally got it to shut.  While they worked to close to door Chuck told me one of their family rules, a rule that he said applied to situations like that.

What’s the rule? I asked.

“If you’re gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough,” Chuck said.

The Rules
The Rules

Here are my Top Ten.

  1. Never lie to yourself.
  2. Half measures avail nothing.
  3. It’s an ill wind that blows no good.
  4. Sooner or later you get to be known for what you are.
  5. The harder you work the luckier you get.*
  6. If you’re gonna be dumb, you’ve got to be tough.
  7. Never bet another man’s game.*
  8. You never get paid for more than you do until you get caught doing more than you get paid for.*
  9. Get an “est” after your name.*
  10. Pee on problems before you have to call the fire department.* 

*These were Dad’s rules

Postscript:  Was Pop mad about that door? Not at all. He wanted his truck on top of the hill, Mike put it there, and that’s all that mattered.

Coming Monday: Payback

Three Strikes Is All You Get

Brother Pop had driven to Snowbird, oh, at least 100 times, but it didn’t matter.  He was lost. Instead of turning left at Big Y, about a mile from the cabin, and coming up the left  fork of Juanite Creek he kept on going straight, up the right fork of Juanite.

[Snowbird is in the mountains of North Carolina, pretty close to Tennessee, in the middle of nowhere. The nearest town, Robbinsville, population 620, is 22 miles away.]

Pop and two buddies had driven to the mountain from Gadsden, AL, in Pop’s Ford  Ranger, pulling a trailer loaded down with two ATVs. His buddies had also been to Snowbird many times.  How all three of them missed the turn I don’t know. 

Whoever was driving just kept on keeping on, up that old logging road, and the further they went the worse it got.  There were deep ruts in the road, deep enough to bury somebody, but they straddled them and kept on going.  There were 10, 12-feet tall trees growing in the road too —that was a another clue — but they just ran over them.

You would have thought that somebody, at some point, would have said, “You know what?  I think we’re going the wrong way.”  But nobody did.

My brother and his buddies didn’t figure it out until they just couldn’t go any further — the truck was surrounded by trees, broken behind them and standing tall in front and on both sides.  There was nothing to do now but turn around.

It was was raining a little, cold, and getting dark when the three men got out of Pop’s pickup and unloaded the two four-wheelers.  They couldn’t back the trailer down that road, no way, and turning the truck around was gonna be a drill.  They were in a fix.

They decided to try to make a little room to turn around by unhooking the trailer, pushing it backwards a little ways and over to the side. 

But they couldn’t unhook it.

The trailer was locked on the trailer hitch ball and they had left the trailer hitch key back in Gadsden.

No matter.  If they couldn’t take the trailer off the trailer hitch, they would take the trailer hitch off the truck — they would unbolt the hitch ball. 

But they couldn’t unbolt it.

They had left their toolbox in Alabama, too.

No matter. They decided to cut the trees blocking their way and carve out a place big enough to turn the truck around.

But they couldn’t turn it around.

Their chain saw wouldn’t start. 

Three strikes. Isn’t that all you get?

Postscript: Pop and his buddies called it a night, left the truck and trailer where they were, and rode their four-wheelers to the cabin. Next day a bunch of us went back with a wrench, took the ball off the hitch, and got that truck turned around.

NOTE: I was up at Snowbird earlier this month and I meant to take a picture of that so-called road. I’ll get one next time.

Coming Monday: The Nankoweap Trail: Don’t Look Down