Before my family moved to Maine when I was ten years old, we lived out in Arizona on the other side of the country. Although my memory isn't quite perfect since I was about 8 years old when this happened, I watched a hilarious yet sad spectacle of people trying to be the hero in their truck.
My family loves spending their spare time relaxing at a lake, cruising around in our ancient boat, swimming, tubing, stuff like that. Every chance we had we would make the trip out to one of the few lakes in the state for a weekend in our RV. On this particular weekend we were parked right next to the boat landing, which is a huge cement ramp into the water about 30 feet wide so plenty of people can use it at the same time. As me and my family were hanging out around our little campground we watched a couple that were having trouble getting their boat out of the water. The ramp was covered in algae and was extremely slippery. The guy had made the mistake of letting the front wheels on his truck get below the waterline, and probably didn't have four wheel drive, so as soon as he let off the brake he slid about five feet back into the lake. When he started to accelerate, the truck slid even further, pushing the boat back into the lake and off its trailer. The water was almost up to the windows, so the guy them down a bit and asked someone else on the ramp for some help to avoid opening his door. Another truck kindly lined up to pull him out, but as soon as he started to pull the first truck slid even further back and pulled the second truck into the water after him. The first truck was essentially sunk at this point, so the driver opened the door and hopped out, flooding the inside of his truck.
We watched this all unfold in the scorching sun as a people continued to think that their truck had enough power to pull the previous attempts our of the lake, and within the next two hours there was 5 trucks in the lake with a small crowd watching the scene. My family had stadium seats to the show, but eventually people realized that the problem wasn't going to be solved continuing to sink trucks. Eventually someone called a towing company who came and used a longer tow rope to avoid the slippery ramp to finally fetch all the trucks out of the lake one at a time, after a several hour ordeal. Presumably all of the trucks were toast, as they all had to be hauled away on a trailer afterward.
Heh! I can just see all these guys saying or at least thinking, "Don't tell me my ruffy tuffy truck can't handle a sissy job like this. I'm gonna be the hero of this here rodeo!" What are you going to do with macho men and misplaced pride--a dangerous combo!
ReplyDeleteYou do a fine job describing the scene, the problem, the action, the aftermath!