Guess what, guess what?! Teddy got a pocket watch for his birthday. Teddy got a pocket watch! Yep, Teddy got a pocket watch. And guess who it was from??!! Did you guess yet? It was from… Amy. Amy Haddock. Yep, I do believe he's got himself a girl! (But I have to be really, really careful what I say, ‘cuz she reads my letters.) (Hi, Amy.)
Monday, we stirred the dust madly all afternoon, expecting our friend to arrive any minute. She and another friend of ours finally got here a little after 8:00 that evening ----- and only stayed about five minutes, because they were expected at another of our friends’ houses for supper. She’s in high demand! We were sorry she couldn’t stay longer.
Lura Kay went to the dentist and, after they took a couple of X-rays, learned that the reason she was having such awful toothaches was because she had two molars that were cracked. They both need to be removed, but it couldn’t be done that day, because the dentist who pulls molars was not in the office. They must be very careful what sorts of medicine they give Lura Kay to deaden the teeth; Novocain causes her heart to race awfully.
Dorcas learned how to knit a month or two ago. She has made a few dishcloths, and is in the process of making a scarf. She is feeling ever so smug about it, because Hannah tried several times to knit, to no avail.
“Hey, no fair!” howled Hannah, when first she saw what her sister was doing.
Dorcas laughed. “It’s easy,” she told Hannah.
“Poo,” said Hannah, wrinkling her nose.
Wednesday, suddenly I learned: We were going to Elkhart, Indiana, to get two loads of enclosed trailers—six, altogether. We would drive Larry’s Uncle Clyde’s pickup, a Dodge extended cab, and pull the big slant trailer with it, while pulling the smaller trailer Larry made with the six-door crewcab, and towing a 20-foot trailer behind that.
Larry wanted to leave by six o’clock p.m., so we got ourselves in gear and packed. All of us but Dorcas went along; Dorcas stayed, on account of her job at the daycare center.
We left at 10:30 p.m., not too awfully late, considering how late we have sometimes been. The first order of business was to go to a ranch somewhere near Beatrice, Nebraska, in the southeast corner of the state, to collect our big trailer from one of the men who has been renting it. I drove the Dodge pickup, following Larry, who was driving his pickup with the shorter trailer. With only one wrong turn, we found it.
So there we went, rumbling into a big nice (sleeping) ranch with two diesel pickups, at about midnight. And we went on rumbling and clanking around for about an hour, for we unhitched the shorter trailer, then hitched the big slant trailer onto the big pickup, then hitched the shorter trailer onto the Dodge, and then drove Clyde’s pickup and the trailer up onto the slant trailer, a job that is not so easy as it sounds. The trailer wound up slightly askew, and the tires were hanging off the edge an inch or so. Teddy and Joseph helped Larry chain it down, using the come-along to pull it hard the other direction, in the hopes that, with each big bump we hit, it would jar that smaller trailer in micro-millimeters the right way, until it was centered on the slant trailer’s ramps.
No such luck. That trailer stayed put. It didn’t budge. All the way to Elkhart, those back two trailer tires remained an inch off the edge of the big trailer. Ah, well; as long as they didn’t move, everything was fine.
In the meantime, while Larry fastened everything down securely, the kids played tag in the big ranch yard. Teddy joined the game, running backward in order to give the littles a better chance to catch him. Oh, dear, it was so funny to see him scuttling along backwards, feet flying, hand outstretched toward his smaller siblings. He dodged and ducked and darted back and forth, and they simply could not catch him. He’d let them get close enough that they thought, surely, this time they’d be able to touch his hand. And then he’d kick in the afterburner, and off he’d go, staying just out of reach. Lydia, Caleb, and Victoria laughed so hard, they could hardly run. Hester decided she could catch him—and she sprinted after him. Teddy feet flew even faster…and she never could catch him.
We got back to Lincoln at 2:00 a.m.—and we were stayed at a truck stop for another hour, fixing a broken valve stem. Luckily, they had a mechanic on duty 24 hours a day, for Larry didn’t have all the equipment he needed to fix the tire. The man first tried using a big heavy-duty jack to lift our pickup…but he soon switched to his big air jack especially for trucks…and only then he was able to lift the pickup. The most surprising thing about it was that the mechanic only charged $10.00 for doing all that work!
Finally, at 3:00 a.m., we were on the road again.
A little ways east of Lincoln, Larry began checking his eyelids for holes, and taking altogetherly too long to do it, too. So I drove. I drove until we were about 30 miles east of Des Moines, managing to get to the city before rush hour began. And the sun was behind the clouds, so I didn’t have to drive straight into a rising sun, thankfully.
We got to Elkhart at about 4:00 p.m. We went to the factory that makes the trailers, and unloaded the Dodge—after hooking the battery pack on it, since the battery was flat--and smaller trailer. Larry unhitched it. Then, while he unhitched the big trailer from the Ford, Joseph, Victoria, and I headed off to a nearby truck stop for one of those crucial pit stops. We drove out of the large parking lot, down a side road, and started to pull onto the highway—and the pickup quit. I tried to start it a couple of times; it started easily, and died. 
Fearful of running the battery down again, and supposing that the pickup was out of fuel, I let it roll backward out of harms way, and then we bailed out and walked back.
Soon all of us were in the six-door crewcab, heading for the truck stop. Larry put in fuel, and then, with Teddy and Joseph, headed back to get the Dodge. Hester, Lydia, and I sat on a nearby porch while Caleb and Victoria collected rocks from the flowerbeds, exclaiming over the pink quartz and the sparkly black and white granite. They used the soft limestone to draw faces on the cement. I think they would have taken the entire rock bed home with them, had I not instructed them otherwise.
Finally the Ford appeared down the street, towing the Dodge behind it with a rope bigger around than my arm. Larry fueled the Dodge. We prepared to depart.
The pickup still wouldn’t start.
Eventually, after numerous forays and sorties under the hood, it was discovered that the trouble was a fuse that had blown—the fuse that ran the computer that opened the valve to send the proper amount of fuel into the engine. Glad to have found the problem, Larry trotted into the truckstop, bought a box of fuses, and replaced the bad one. I started the pickup.
The fuse blew.
Larry put another fuse in, and I started the pickup again.
The fuse blew.
After adjusting something under the hood again, Larry told me he would drive the pickup; I could drive the old trusty Ford.
We headed off.
At the first major intersection, with cars and trucks swarming around us like bees around a hive, the Dodge died. There we were, in the turning lane, blocking traffic…
Larry came running back to get the towrope out of the pickup. “Pull in front of me and back up,” he said, “and I’ll hook this up. We’ll drag that thing to the motel.”
I looked at all the traffic. I would be smack-dab in the middle of the intersection… “You do it,” I said, and scrambled over to the passenger’s seat.
So Larry did it. Vehicles surged around us, some faces looking entirely disgruntled at the snarl-up we were triggering. Teddy jumped into the driver’s seat, Larry got into the Dodge, and we lurched around the corner and off of that busy street. Half a block later, Larry spotted a parking lot, and told Teddy to pull in. He was going to make that pickup run, do or die…
He tied some wires together, short-circuiting the fuse-run computer, and turned the key. Voilá. The Dodge chuckled to life again. We drove to the motel and rented a couple of rooms.
Teddy turned the Dodge off.
That is, he tried.
But the pickup chugged merrily away, with nary a hiccup nor a splutter. Turns out, Larry had to untie the wires he’d tied together, every time we wanted to turn off that pickup; and then, when we were ready to go, he had to hot-wire it again.
We gathered up our things and climbed the steps to our rooms. I tell you, those beds looked mighty inviting!—and the bathtub looked even better.
So, while Larry and the children went off to KFC to procure some fodder—in the six-door crewcab, you can be sure—I made use of the tub. I’m genuinely glad I live in an age where running water is commonplace, and taking a bath and washing one’s hair once each day is perfectly normal and ordinary. Whatever would I have done, had I lived 150 years ago, when baths once a week were a luxury?! Ugh!
Soon, the Food Finders were back with some scrumptious cuisine. They had already eaten at the restaurant, and were dropping off some food before going off to see if the bumper cars and bumper boats Larry and the boys had ridden the week before were running. They brought chicken pot pie, coleslaw, potatoes and gravy, strawberry cheesecake, and iced tea. I happily tucked into it. Mmmmm…
The bumper vehicles were not running, so the explorers were back before long. They then conducted an experiment to see if they could run the motel out of hot water.
Nope, couldn’t be done. We turned out the lights and went to sleep.
Early the next morning, while everyone was still sleeping, Larry got up and went to load the first three enclosed trailers. He returned, woke us all up, and went off with Teddy and Joseph to load the next batch of trailers.
Time stretched on…
The littles and I carried all our bags and suitcases and paraphernalia down the stairs to the curbside, sat beside them, and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
At 11:45, they returned. We threw jetsam and flotsam into pickups and headed for home, Teddy driving the Ford, towing a trailer loaded with two enclosed trailers, and pulling another 20-foot enclosed trailer behind that. I rode with Teddy, and we took the lead; perhaps so Larry would notice if we drove into the ditch, and could stop and tow us back out again. It was a blustery day, and the trailers caught a lot of wind.
As usual, Larry talked to me more on the CB than he does when I am sitting right beside him. Perhaps we should invest in another handset, or perhaps just borrow Joseph’s walkie-talkies, and take them along even if we have only one vehicle?
The toll roads cause enormous bottlenecks, and make us nervous over whether or not the person behind us is prepared to stop as suddenly as we have. Entire new neighborhoods having hundreds of under-construction homes are springing up all the way from East Chicago, Indiana, to west of Joliet, Illinois. It seems like nothing but city for miles and miles, with no break in between. I don’t care much for it, thank you. Give me the northern Canadian Rockies, where you may not see another soul for hours, any day. (Well, not the day that my vehicle breaks down, please.) (And not the day a grizzly has me treed, pôr favör.)
Somewhere around Joliet, I directed Teddy into the passenger’s seat and took over the driving. Interesting conversations took place behind me in the pickup, and I kept one ear pivoted backwards and cocked at all times, so as not to miss anything.
Caleb informed his siblings one afternoon, “All the club crackers are mine, because they have my nickname on them.”
That, because Lydia told him his nickname was “Club”.
Just like last time, we had troubles with the vending machines at the rest areas. This time, however, Larry looked for sensors before he went to pounding and beating on the stupid things. You see, a little ‘gate’ that held the bottle of juice on the tilted shelf it sat upon had opened, but the shelf was not tilted as much as it should’ve been, and the bottle stayed on its perch rather than tumbling off like it was supposed to. The little ‘gate’ was still open, and if we could just jar the machine enough, the juice was sure to fall… Larry thumped harder.
Suddenly, a bag of potato chips in the flanking machine plummeted into the receptor. Larry yelped and dived after it like a dog on a bone, and the children burst into laughter, making several of the rest area patrons smile upon us fondly, despite the fact that Larry was endeavoring to demolish the vending machine.
Finally the juice toppled over and plunged to the bottom of the machine. Victoria made a small, glad shriek, and the littles cheered. We left before the money-snatchers took any more of our hard-earned cash.
Friday night, we stopped at a Days’ Inn at Little Amana…a mistake. It was 11:30 p.m. when we pulled in, so we had no way of knowing that there was a festival going on, and tourists by the thousands would descend on the place the next day. Little Amana is a settlement of Amish exhibits where tourists can buy all sorts of things the Amish have made.
Because it was dark, we pulled into what looked like a nice big area to park, thinking the road doubtless went on around the buildings and out onto the street on the other side.
We were wrong.
So the next morning, while impatient, crabby people waited, Larry backed the big pickup with the double trailers around and in between dozens of parked cars. Meanwhile, the littles played unconcernedly in the big grassy courtyard. They found a small calico kitten, and one or another of them was sure to be carrying it around while it purred loudly.
The Backing of the Trailers continued.
What I will never understand is why people who can see that there is a big rig backing up, in a tight place, and needing all the room it can get, will unerringly pull exactly into the way, and sit stupidly, waiting—to be whammed into, perhaps? Why do they do that?? Aarrgghh!
When finally the 20-foot enclosed trailer was back far enough, Larry unhitched it, let it sit, and turned the pickup and the shorter trailer around so that he would be able to first back up again and hitch onto the 20-foot trailer, and then drive out another way without more backing of that ‘snake’. Meanwhile, I tried my best hand at the art of Public Relations, doing my utmost to pacify the elderly man and his wife who, upon noticing that their car was blocked, were suddenly seized with an irrepressible urge to get out of there. Understand, these were tourists. Tourists who had not minded spending much time leisurely strolling amongst the tents containing dozens of booths with all manner of things to buy. Tourists who had not minded standing in line sandwiched between hundreds of other tourists. However, they did mind if their car was blocked in, whether they were in a hurry to get to another just-as-important destination, or not.
When the Ford and the double-trailer load was out of the way, Larry backed the big slant-trailer and the Dodge into position. The double trailers track better behind the pickup, not cutting corners so short; but it is nigh to impossible to back two trailers when there is hardly any room to maneuver. Teddy got into the Ford to wait for Larry’s signal to go. About that time, one of those terribly impatient tourists decided he absolutely must drive his pickup through a spot between the pickup and some gas pumps. Teddy suddenly realized he was going to hit our mirror, so Teddy grabbed it and pulled it in—but it was the mirror that had once broken, and Larry had repaired it with plastic weld. It was fixed—so long as somebody didn’t try adjusting it at the main hinge next to the door.
CRRRRRAAAAACK!!! It came right off in Teddy’s hand, making Teddy’s hair stand straight up on end.
We got out of that congested place, and parked on the shoulder of the ‘On’ ramp while Larry taped the mirror back on with wide black tape. One must have one’s mirrors, to navigate Interstate 80, unless one wishes to commit suicide.
And then we were off and running.
On the Interstate, it was bumper-to-bumper traffic, just like Interstate 80 always is, especially in Iowa and Illinois. We were sailing along nicely when, all of a sudden, there was Larry in the Dodge, pulling alongside, Larry and Joseph pointing at our pickup and mouthing something unknown to us. Then they went on and pulled in ahead of us.
We did not know what they wanted, but we assumed the worst, of course. Perhaps the back trailer had floated away into a deep gorge. Perhaps the middle trailer had come loose from the hitch head it was fastened to, and on one of the horrendous bumps we’d crashed over had flipped upside down and was even now dragging along behind us on its roof, with only the chains on the axle holding it to the trailer. Or perhaps we’d left one child behind at Little Amana! The CBs refused to work, so they did us no good.
Teddy pulled onto the shoulder. But, to our dismay, Larry did not slow and head for the shoulder as we’d thought he would; rather, he hurtled on down the highway, leaving us in the dust.
“Pull back on,” I told Teddy. “Must not be anything too bad, or he would have stopped.”
With a good deal of difficulty, Teddy pulled back into the stream of traffic. We topped the next hill and went flashing past a familiar-looking Dodge and slant trailer hauling three enclosed trailers—parked on the shoulder.
“Oh, brother!” I said. “Well, just exit at the next ‘Off’ ramp, and we’ll find out what they want.”
A mile further on, we exited. Teddy pulled the rig onto the shoulder of the ramp, and we waited.
And waited.
Larry, it seemed, was having just as much of a problem getting back into the traffic flow as we had. Finally he caught up with us. He pulled up beside us and rolled down his window to tell us what they’d been trying to convey with all the frantic hand signals and gestures:
Our left blinker signal had been on. :-O
The journey continued. A couple of studs broke off a rear wheel on the big pickup, but there were still six holding, so we proceeded on…
I drove from east of Des Moines the rest of the way home. At one point, we stopped at a gas station in western Iowa. Larry turned around in their parking lot, which wasn’t very big, and the trailer wound up dragging the ground, because of the steepness of the incline. He told me I could turn around in the parking lot adjacent to the station. So I did…but there were lots of nooks and crannies, curbs and valleys; and in the middle of the operation, a police car came zooming in and nearly got himself right in my way. He wisely pulled into a parking stall and stayed put as I finagled my way through the labyrinth. I made it safely through three-quarters of the way, but the last couple of turns out onto the road were simply too tight. I had to jounce the back trailer over a curb to get out, while the pickup went up the curb on the opposite side of the road.
Teddy said the patrolman was probably just thinking to himself, “My! She’s really good at that—uh, oh—AAAaaaa!!!”
Yike. I was not made to drive school buses, nor yet semis, nor yet trains. I was made to drive small Renault Le Cars, and Honda Accords, and Gremlins.
Well, maybe not Gremlins.
But definitely Porsche Boxsters. Purple metallic Porsche Boxsters, to be exact. So why won't anybody give me one??
A few miles further on, I missed the exit for Blair and Valley, and wound up going through North Omaha, adding another half an hour to our journey. Larry tried valiantly to call me on the CB, but the CBs didn’t seem to work, unless we were side by side. He pulled into the turning lane, sped up, and put on his turn signal, hoping I’d look into my right mirror… No such luck. I trucked blithely on.
It wasn’t long before I realized the scenery did not look familiar; and shortly after that, I realized Larry was not behind me. I exited.
Guess what? There was no return ramp to enter the highway on the other side. So we drove on a service road to the next entrance ramp, and then went back the way we had come. Several miles back, we met Larry, just coming onto the highway from another Interstate. I have no idea where he’d been all that time. He tried to explain it to me, but I knew no more at the end of the explanation than I had known at the beginning.
He decided that, from there on, he would take the lead. I was glad to let him. For some reason, he could hear me when I talked to him on the CB; but I could not hear him. So, to acknowledge my comments, he flashed his brake lights three times.
And then I figured out why the CBs weren’t working right: Mine was set on the weather channel.
Evidently, one of us had bumped the button with our thumb while we were talking. Luckily, several of us had used it, so no one knew for sure whom to blame. This meant that I could send messages, but I could not hear them. Bother. Such troubles!
After a relatively safe trip, we were coming through Schuyler, only fifteen miles east of Columbus. We’d made it through the center of the town, where for a short ways there are four lanes of traffic, and were on the west side of town. The lanes had already narrowed to only two lanes of traffic, with a center lane for turning, when, suddenly, Teddy and I looked to the right, and there was a truck! An eighteen-wheeler, only inches away. How could there possibly be room for him, between us and the curb??! And I could only imagine how close he was to our trailer, which was wider even than our pickup.
It took only half a second, I think, for all this to register, and then I was wrenching the wheel away, jerking us violently into the turning lane, where, fortunately, there were no cars. The truck barreled madly on his way. Soon he was behind Larry, dodging in and out of his lane to see if there were any cars coming. When he thought he had time enough to pass, he swerved abruptly out into the left lane, roared around the Dodge with its trailer, and then veered sharply back in. We could see him, for a time, careening around cars farther on, making the highway a hazard for everyone else on it. I think we shall report him; we know where the trucking company is located.
I belatedly found out, about the time we hit the outskirts of Columbus, that the load I was towing goes on out to Denver (actually, Berthoud, Colorado, 60 miles west of Denver)—next week! So we will get to see the mountains this year.
We got home before dark—an amazing thing, considering our record. We went first to the shop, unhooked the big pickup, and then I drove it home to unload everything, leaving Teddy and Joseph at the shop to help Larry unload the three trailers on the big slant trailer. They used Larry’s big forklift to get them off.
Kitty and Tad dashed out of the house the minute we got home, as if they had been cooped up all week, and were so glad to get out they couldn’t even pause a moment to welcome us. But it wasn’t long before they dashed right back in again, and were purring loudly in various people’s arms.
The littles immediately dashed into the house to greet Dorcas, and I heard Caleb tell her, “We had sooooooo much fun!!” He cavorted excitedly around her, hopping from one foot to the other. “And once,” he continued, talking breathing both in and out, “I even had the whole back of the six-door crewcab all to myself!!”
My brother Loren has not been well for a couple of weeks, so two of our parishioners took the morning and evening services. A new young men’s quartet sang in the evening There’s No Friend To Me Like Jesus, one of my favorite songs. Bobby sings the highest tenor part. It truly was beautiful.
And now, there is a humungous pile of clothes waiting to be folded, supper to be cooked, dishes to be washed, jeans to be patched… I’d better get busy!
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