My neighbour Wilf Smalley is a proud man. You hear it in his voice when he insists that he has never called a tow truck to the farm in 30 years.
That’s a formidable achievement for anyone who farms the gumbo clay soils on the gentle slopes of Petunia Valley. I have personally watched Wilf play choo-choo train with all of his tractors, all of his family and all of his heavy chains, dragging a half-submerged International 955 out of a soggy cornfield. Heck, the sideroad was lined with cars as if there was an auction sale or a spectacular barn fire.
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With a public triumph like that to his credit, why would anyone expect Wilf to call CAA when Katy’s car got a simple flat tire in the laneway?
Katy had just jumped in the car to go shopping, backed around and put it in drive, when she heard a loud “thunk” on the passenger side. “That’s odd,” she thought and put her foot on the gas. There was a loud whoosh and the car sank down on its right rear wheel. It turned out that the leaf spring had broken and snapped against the tire and when she moved forward the jagged end of the spring sliced the tire off the rim like a potato peeler.
Wilf came out and studied the situation for a moment. He saw that the spring was sticking right across the place where the factory-supplied car jack was supposed to fit. “Well that’s not a problem,” he said. “There’s an old floor jack right here by the woodpile. I’ll use that.”
He dug the floor jack out of the snow and slid it under the axle, being careful to engage the emergency brake as the manual advises. The jack lifted the car up just high enough to take the full weight of the car but not quite high enough to remove the tire. Then the jack seized. No up and no down. “Hmm,” said Wilf. “I’ll go get the Massey and lift it off the jack.”
You will recall that Wilf’s precious antique Massey Harris has famously jumpy hydraulics at best and can be really unpredictable when carrying something really heavy on the three-point hitch like a seven-foot snow blower. And Wilf freely admits now that it isn’t a great idea to try to raise a car with a manure bucket, in wintertime, on even the gentlest of slopes.
We’d had a week-long thaw followed by a flash freeze, which made the footing treacherous everywhere. The loader rose smoothly for about 18 inches and then went through one of its involuntary muscle spasms, snapping the car into the air like a pig snooting up a loose board in the barnyard. One of the bucket tines punctured the gas tank and everything started to slide ponderously off the laneway and downhill in the direction of the farm pond.
It was one of those really slow-moving train wrecks that gives you lots of time to think about what you could have done to prevent this situation but not enough time to do anything about it. Wilf saved the tractor by simply dropping the bucket. Katy watched her car slip lazily into the pond and bob gently, trunk side up. Then she walked down the hill and handed Wilf her cellphone.
“Now will you call CAA?” she asked evenly. Have you ever noticed that little warning sign at
the pump that tells you to turn off your cellphone when gassing up your car? Apparently, there is a tiny risk that the electrical charge from the battery could ignite gas fumes. Well, the guys at the National Safety Council aren’t just blowing smoke, because Wilf and Katy felt a whirl of heat around them like they were being raptured up to Heaven. A ball of fire raced down the hill and set the pond on fire, bringing all traffic on the Petunia Valley Sideroad to a halt for the second time in a decade.
Wilf insists that although he did technically try to call for assistance, his record remains unbroken because no tow truck actually came to the farm. Just the fire department.
