Flashback Friday: The Water Truck

When Randy and I first moved to Kansas, we rented a little house that his parents had remodeled. There was one, ok, maybe two conditions that we had to consider: a) They lived next door (now, I LOVE my in-laws, but not so much as neighbors when we hadn't been married quite a year yet); b) There wasn't exactly running water, in the sense that it didn't come from the city or a well. Instead, you actually had to go get your water and put it into a cistern. Which, ofcourse, required the water truck.

Normally Randy or Dale (my F-I-L) would go get the water, so it never seemed to be much of an issue until one day. Randy was on shift at the fire station and Dale & Linda were out of town. It was a Friday, it was hot and I wasn't happy to be in the position of driving the truck. Which meant attempting to get the hose into the tank, fill it, shut it back off, drive back to the house, hook up to the cistern and unload the water.

I carefully enlisted Dustin (Randy's younger brother who was 13 at the time) to assist me in the retrieval of the precious commodity I had previously taken for granted. We were a great team at the "fill station" and had no problems, until we headed home that is.

Now I know when you think of Kansas you probably think 'flat', right? Western Kansas, yes, eastern Kansas close to the Missouri line, no. There were two steep hills we had to go up and down to get back to the house. They also were very curvy, being called "switchback" roads (I overheard someone say that once). Ok, back to the water truck, we're full now don't forget.

We creep down the first hill and around the bend, as we begin our climb up the next hill the engine decides to die. Dustin looks at me with great confidence and encourages me to just start it back up. Riiiight. Not working at all, I mean this thing had no power, as if the battery was drained completely. And here we were on that hill making Friday traffic worse than it already was until our first form of help arrived.

You could hear the roar of their engine as they were coming up the hill. Three high school kids in their refurbished Chevy Nova stopped to see if they could give us a jump. They proceeded to turn around into on coming traffic (they had to face the truck to give it a jump ofcourse!) and attempted to get the engine running. Three tries, no dice.

Now, you might wonder why I didn't call someone I knew right? Hello we're talking 1998: every man, woman and chlid wasn't carrying a cell phone then.

These guys decided on plan B. They would stop traffic both ways and push the truck back down the hill into the cul-de-sac at the bottom to the left. Not only was this crazy, but it also required me to be in the vehicle to steer and I couldn't just leave Dustin out on the street. When you don't have any better plan though, you go with what "might" work. They stood out on the street like traffic cops and pushed the truck like it wasn't filled with 500 gallons of water. Somehow, I manged to steer it into the cul-de-sac, without hitting any mailboxes, and came to a stop. The bewildered homeowner, whose driveway I was now blocking, came out to see if they could help and offered to let us use their phone. I'm sure they wanted to help, but I'm more certain they wanted the ugly beast brown truck out from in front of their lovely home.

My option: Call Randy at work-who else was I going to call? He hadn't been working for that fire department very long, so he couldn't just leave to come help us. Thankfully, Randy's aunt and uncle had moved to Kansas as well, so he put a call in to Uncle David.

I was never so happy to see a familiar face in all my life when David showed up. He muttered some things under his breath about the water truck, but was quite calm when he laid out his plan. "We hook the water truck up to my truck and we'll get you home". Ok, riiight. Again this requires me (I was 19 at the time) to DRIVE the truck with no power (that = no brakes people!). David reassures me with the option to just "run into the back of my truck if you lose the brakes". Umm, ok.

He hooks me up and takes off, and I mean takes off. I go flying over the curb and hit my head on the ceiling (there were no seat belts in the truck) and just keep praying I don't have to ram the back of his nice truck. The rest of the trip home is a little fuzzy in my memory due to the high stress of the situation, but pushing the useless brakes to the floorboard is still in there. We made it, however, and we didn't crash!

I vowed to never get water again, though I rode with Randy another time and we, you guessed it, broke down on a hill. That time Dale was home and came and fixed it, no problem. It definitely was not the adventure Dustin, David and I had once upon a time in Kansas.

The moral of this flashback: Sometimes common sense doesn't work and you have to do things "unconventionally".
P.S. Thanks Uncle David!!!