Adventures in the Turtle Mountains

It all started a couple days ago when we heard that we were going to get a change in weather. I needed to go vacuum on Monday (today) and there were some people coming to have a tour of our place in the afternoon Monday, so I decided that it would be better to get it over with as soon as possible. I don't usually go to vacuum on Sunday, but I think that God arranged everything to work out really well!


Yesterday morning I was not feeling like going over to work, but after thinking about it I figured that I'd just get it done so I wouldn't have to worry about getting snowed in. I am not licensed to drive alone yet so Jonathan rode with me in the truck. We thought we'd take the truck so we would be sure not to get stuck but I have only driven the truck on the road once before, even though I have had plenty of practice and can manage the gears pretty well. The truck tends to take a long time to warm up (choke needs adjusting) and so when we got to the mailbox it stalled and wouldn't start up again. Jonathan got out and propped the choke open with his Gerber and I started the truck again. We drove for a little ways further and then the truck died again. Jonathan got out and held the choke open again and we continued on. It didn't quit again until we got to the church. I told Jonathan I could call home and tell Mom he was on his way back and to check on him if he wasn't back soon. I have a routine that I follow each time and is doesn't include any phone calls until I'm all done, so by the time I walked inside and punched in my time card I forgot about calling!

Well, that was all I knew until I had finished vacuuming and washed the kitchen floor and called home for someone to come pick me up. Mom answered the phone and said, "They had to go pull him out again." "Who?" I asked. "Oh, you didn't hear about it I suppose. Dad and Andrew and David had to go help Jonathan pull a guy out of the ditch. Can you just hang on for a bit?" I said I could wait and then finished cleaning up. It took a while and then Dad came driving up in the car to pick me up. He said that I missed out on the adventure!

I wasn't there to see how it all happened but from what I gathered, Jonathan was on his way home (the truck didn't stall at all) and came upon an older looking man in a pickup truck with a plow on the front, stuck on the side of the road about 3/4 of a mile from our driveway. Earlier in the day, Andrew had stuck an extra grain scoop shovel in the back of the truck along with the other one that was already in there and so there was two good shovels for digging along with a logging chain and my cover-alls (that I brought in case we needed to dig ourselves out if we got stuck). Jonathan offered to help pull the guy's truck out of the ditch with our truck and so they hooked up. They dug out a lot of the snow that was around it using the two shovels and pulled on the truck. It was on a pretty steep ditch and the wheels of the truck that were off the road didn't want to come back up onto the road. By this time the brothers and Mom at home began to wonder about Jonathan so Dad took the car and Andrew and David and they drove down the road and found Jonathan shoveling. If I would have remembered to call, Jonathan would have had help sooner! With some more digging and pulling they got the truck out of the ditch.

Now the truck is out and Dad turns the car around and heads home with Andrew, leaving David with Jonathan. Jonathan pulls our truck over to the side of the road so the truck they pulled out (red colored truck) could get around him on the road. The red truck pulled out around our truck (the blue truck) and pulled too far to the side and slid into the ditch again on the other side of the road!

Now Dad is back at home and Jonathan is there shoveling again until it looks like he could pull the red truck out for the second time. The other guy (turns out to be maintenance man for the restaurant near by) offered to help but was already tired from shoveling so he needed to rest. So Jonathan began shoveling and cleaned a lot of the snow away from the red truck and hooked our logging chain to it. The tow belt that the other man had had broken because it was old and frayed so he used our chain. Then, to add to the excitement, Jonathan hooked the chain too short, so our truck was not on the middle of the road. With a jerk, (I am just guessing at this part) our truck strained backward and slid off into the ditch.

Now there are two trucks in the ditch and nobody to pull them out! Jonathan and David started digging and had to dig a path in the snow about 30 yards long in order to get our truck out. Now that our truck is out Jonathan headed home to get some help and loaded a bunch of big eighty-pound logs into the back of the truck for extra weight and went back out to the red truck. Dad took the car in case it would be needed but it wasn't. Now they dug out the snow and it was a simple matter to get the truck out of the ditch. The guy (I don't know his name) offered to buy the whole family a tenderloin dinner at the restaurant he works at with meat "THIS THICK!" he said holding out his fingers about an inch apart.

I wrote this story based on what Jonathan told me, so some parts might have happened a little differently than I wrote it.

Now there was a lot that could have made this not happen like it did. One would be if I had decided not to go vacuum on Sunday (which would have been easy to do), two would be if I had gone a bit earlier or later, three would be if I had called everything might have gotten done faster but I think God had had it all planned out just right!
Peter