little blue truck...and the unlikely car wash.

it was the year 1983. james and i and our two boys lived at the time on a small piece of land in which the back yard bordered a man-made rockpit. for those of you who live in a city and don't know what a rock pit is...it's where these monster machines come along onto a big empty piece of land and scoop all the dirt out and use it for fill dirt and then they put water in the gigantic hole that is left behind and it looks like a little lake. they stock them with fish and of course, there are ducks. and turtles. and other critters that live in the water. occassionally, due to the wrath of mother nature, the edges of the rockpit will begin to deteriorate and you have to buttress the land with humongous rocks and plant trees or build yourself a concrete wall to keep the water from washing away your land. else you will walk out your back door one morning and find yourself walking on water. like Jesus.


well, mother nature must have had a problem with us at this particular point in time, because the water was just washing away our land quicker than you could bat an eye. and finding big huge rocks and then finding a way to lift them and transport them back to our house was no easy task. so, on weekends we would go riding around, in james' little blue truck, looking for errant rocks along the side of the roads that we could...ummmmm....borrow. you know, to buttress our land. i did not want my kids walking on water. i didn't particularly want to walk on it myself. we would haul our treasures back to the house and place the rocks just so.


one day james had come upon a building that was being demolished and the man that owned the property said that we could have all the cement blocks and rocks that we wanted...for free. we had hit the mother lode... we could do alot of butressing. but we had to load and haul them ourselves. so each afternoon, when james would get off work he would drive his little blue truck over and load blocks. and rocks.

 THIS afternoon he had worked long and hard and filled the back of his little blue truck with as much as it would handle and still move along down the road.

now. my kitchen window faced the rockpit. my sink was underneath the window, and i was standing there that day, washing dishes. and i heard a very loud, very unusual sound. almost like a big splash, but not really... and then a kind of loud gurgling sound. i walked outside to see what it was and there was the little blue truck, which was now IN the rockpit. sinking...and there was james, climbing out of the window of the little blue truck. and he was kinda having a LITTLE bit of a panic thing going on, as he was in deep water, without a paddle. and he couldn't swim. our neighbor to the left of us had been out on his dock, and saw the whole thing unfold, and he yelled over to james that he would throw him a rope and james could tie the rope to the truck somehow and then they could figure out a way to get it up out of the water. but no siree...james wasn't having any part of that. he was in the water. and there were other living things in the water with him. like alligators. and water moccasins. and schools of piranahs that could rip the meat off your bones in 30 seconds or less. (he was pretty skinny, so it would definately be less.) he was outta there! he may not have HAD a paddle, but he could DO a MEAN DOGGY PADDLE!


what had happened, was this. he had decided to back the little blue truck up as close to the water as he could get it, as the rocks were very heavy, and that way he could just kind of slide them out of the truck and into the water. what he wasn't thinking about though, was that the spot where he was backing the truck, the land was on a slope. a downwards slope. a downwards slope towards the rockpit. he put his foot on the clutch to put the truck in park and when he went to open the door to get out, those huge rocks in the back went sliding and the truck went sliding with them, with james still in it. it was pretty deep water, just a few feet from the edge and by the time he managed to get out of the truck it had leveled out and was filling with water. and that was the loud gurgling sound i had heard. (some of the gurgling could possibly have been mixed in with his whimpering and that's why it was so loud...i don't know...just saying.)


so we (meaning me) thought it was just the funniest thing and i wanted to tell everybody because this was about the most exciting thing that had ever happened to us. so i called one of james' brothers, who came on out to the house with their mom and dad in tow, and a friend he had picked up on the way. then our other neighbor, chris, heard all the ruckus going on and he came over to investigate and brought one of his friends that had stopped over after work for a few drinks. and then, of course, i didn't want MY family to miss out on all the excitement, so i called them and they all came over, and before long, we had a yard full of people, and none of us with any idea of how we were going to get the little blue truck out of the rockpit and back home where it belonged.


after alot of discussion, mainly among the men folk, who wouldn't even listen to any of us women folk's ideas, they came up with a plan. chris, the neighbor, would go to his house and grab his scuba diving gear and the guy that had come over with james' brother would call one of his friends who had one of those big redneck pickup trucks with the lift kit and the 4 wheel drive and tell him to come over and bring a chain. and chris would dive down and hook up the chain to the truck and mike would try to pull it up with his big ol' redneck truck.


james just wanted to leave the little blue truck in the rockpit. to meet its watery demise. he was a little embarrassed about the whole thing. he wanted everybody to just go on back home. and not tell anyone else about it. and get on with his life as planned. but this was a small town. and things like this just don't happen everyday in a town like ours. this was NEWS, people!

so...it wasn't to be the way he wanted. after a short wait the big ol' redneck pickup truck came pulling up into the yard and they proceeded to hook a big ol' chain to the back of it...and chris came over wearing his flippers, his mask and snorkel and a bc vest. he hooked the other end of the chain onto his belt loop and jumped into the rockpit and he was down there a pretty good while before he surfaced and gave the thumbs up sign. that was the signal for mike to put his truck in gear and gun it. he did...and after a few short minutes...

from out of the depths of that rockpit,

 came LITTLE BLUE TRUCK, none the worse for wear, and even bringing a small gift up with it.

we let the little fish go. he was too small to fry up for dinner for all those people anyway. (course, if Jesus had been there, he could have blessed that little fish and fed all of us and still had plenty left over.)

and as for the LITTLE BLUE TRUCK... james let him dry out for a few days and then he put a new battery in it, and do you know, that little truck cranked right up. he had found a home with us and God decided it just wasn't his time to go. he wasn't ready for the scrap yard and he didn't intend to get buried on the bottom floor of an old rockpit. that little truck had alot of living still to do.

i did have alot to be grateful for that day. james made it out alive, without having his meat stripped by the piranahs. landon wasn't in the truck with him...which any other day he probably would have been. and i did manage to get these pictures to put in a scrapbook years later. and the little blue truck survived, which was a very good thing...because we sure didn't have any money back then, to get another one. and for these things...Thank you God! you've always got our back!!!