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Aye, Family Is Important. OVER.

Date: Saturday, November 29, 2008 7:14 PM
Subject: Re: the hairy-assed snow fairy (An unknown)
 

    The dirt track is a never-graded minimum-maintenance township road with ruts in it from years ago, all grown over with grass. The camps co-owners say they like to keep it that way 'to keep the riff-raff out,' hoping to persuade anybody who is just out road hunting to think twice about it. It's a dead end road to be sure--especially this year after all the rain we got about harvest time. Nonetheless, one night about five weeks earlier, after I got home from work about 1:00 AM, I got a serious coded message:

"THE CHEVY'S HEAVY ... OVER (click.)"


"THE CHEVY'S HEAVY ... OVER (click.)"


   There was this ominous silence, then a big burst of laughter -- that I recognized as Jared's, a cousin of mine from Brrmidji who said he was spending the weekend down at deer camp, about four miles away from where I lived,... and he'll have the coffee on in the morning.

   I didn't drive my tractor down there because it was broke down temporarily, so I drove my rugged little 1986 Toyota 4X4 pickup. Letting Cubby, my deliriously-happy-to-be-coming-to-deer camp Lab/Chesapeake cross dog out to run the half mile distance; she is greeted by Duke, Jared's equally deliriously happy German Short-Haired Pointer --with such high ground clearance that it appears he could run right over the top of that old black dog before she even know it happened and never touch a hair on her head. 

   Just below the crest of the grade, Jared's club-cabbed Chevy lay mired in a greasy mess of mud and strewn grass still glistening in the thaw of morning frost...

   "So you got my message, eh?" he said coming out of the camp, a big smile across his face. "I found out, THE CHEVY'S HEAVY!" Is it ever wet out here! I never dreamed I'd get stuck off the road only this far! The west side is buried. I got a pull rope..."

   Well, if I didn't have about 500 pounds of scrap plywood sheeting, a huge old console TV in the back of my truck, and deep-lugged bias ply tires -- and he didn't have a long stout tow rope, I couldn't have budged him with my little 2-ton rig, but we managed to jerk his approximately 5500 pound club cab 4x4, out of that mud hole onto drier ground to earn that cup of coffee he promised me in his phone message.

   And guess what?  Since I started this very email, I was made aware of the fact had Jared put a new alternator in my daughter Bonny's car in Bemidji, where she lives too, this evening after her car broke down! She was leaving for Mankato to see her fiance' and then head back down to Iowa and Iowa State Univ., when the battery light came on in her dash. 

   Unable to contact me, she called Jared because he lives near where her she and her mother lives--and luckily he was home to help her. He knew an auto parts guy, she got a student discount, he put the alternator in and save her a couple hundred in labor--and now she just called me to tell me she was on her way again. It's so amazing how things work out sometimes. He thought it may have been his Gramma Irene (Irene Palm Davidson Reece) guiding things as the family had gathered for her funeral only that last last Tuesday morning, and buried in the Palmville Cemetery. She was 91 and had lived a good life. And too, she had been my favorite aunt from whom I purchased the farm that we live on today.


 I just wanted both of you to know what a great guy Jared Davidson of Bemidji is. We love the guy   a lot.


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