Today started out so well--meeting our friends for a mini-brunch at the local fifties diner, enjoying good conversation and inviting them on our porch afterward. Then Howard wanted to travel to a small adjoining town where a fellow chicken enthusiast told him of a good place to buy feed.
It was a pleasant diversion, driving into the rolling countryside, seeing cows grazing on grassland as far as the eye could see. Then the quaint little town of Marland, named after our city's famed forebear and oil magnate, E.W. Marland, with its ancient concrete grain silos looking like castle turrets or fortresses with their notched tops.
"We might as well go feed the chickens now," my husband said after his purchase at a local co-op. I agreed. It was almost lunch time, but that could wait until we got home, I thought. Since the abundant rains recently, tall grass, weeds and thickets of thistles had sprung up on the pasture slope that was so picturesque not long ago, making it difficult to walk down to the chicken houses.
"Are you going to drive down?" I asked Howard, which he usually did, virtually turning our small car into a farm vehicle. He answered that he didn't think it would be too wet, since the sun had shone all yesterday afternoon after that morning's rain and hail. We hauled the feed from the trunk and fed the first two pens, then headed to the corral to check on the broody hen and her offspring we had put in a cage inside a shed, before feeding a cage of bantum chickens.
Uh-oh, the ground was wet and soggy. Howard immediately began to back away, but our car slid sideways toward the ravine, and suddenly we were stuck! No amount of gunning the engine helped. Oh, no! Lord, help us! I prayed. It was hot and muggy and we were tired and hungry. I found some planks and we wedged them under the tires. The wheels still spun and slipped. "Try these rocks," I said hopefully, as I gathered a couple and handed them to my husband.
It was no use. "Aren't we members of a roadside service?" I asked my rumpled and perspiring spouse. "Yes," he said, "but I'm afraid they would get stuck, too." I persuaded him to at least try, and he was so tired he agreed.
"Tell them to look for the yellow mailbox," he instucted the representative after giving her directions to relay to the tow-truck driver. "Forty minutes," he said to me, "I'm going out by the road to wait." I asked him to wait awhile, but as soon as he got out there, I saw him wave to a bright yellow tow truck that was about to pass us up.
I watched anxiously from a distance as, like angels of mercy, they placed a giant hook on our trailer hitch and had the car free in an instant! Praise the Lord! The truck backed up the hill with ease and Howard followed in our car. We were able to laugh with relief over our lunch (it was close to three by this time) at a drive-in restaurant. Home and a nap never looked so good!
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