There's four or five inches of the stuff outside -- on the sidewalks, on the alley, on the roads...on my car.
Snow makes Tam a little giddy; it's still something of a novelty and reminds her of no-school days spent drinking cocoa, reading and having snowball fights (repeat 'til sundown) instead of being blown off the road late on a Friday and only getting home because a busload of High School basketball players happened by on their way back from winning, stopped, and set your car back on the road (with you in it!) by the simple expedient of surrounding it, getting a good grip and lifting. Or the moonlit, snowdrifted 4:00 a.m. in the middle of nowhere when I suddenly realized the road usually had a dip in it about where I was...as my pickup ground to a halt in the deepening drifts. That one took three hours of digging with the only tool available, the previous year's license plate: dig three feet, get in, rock the truck forward and back for four feet of progress and do it all over again 'til I was out of the deepest snow.*
On the other hand, those things are exactly what the snow make me think of. I'm for the shower. There's a little digging and a lot of tricky driving ahead.
__________________________
* Yes, I drove an F150 for a couple of years. The price was right and I was moving from one city to another when I bought it, so I saved the moving-truck rental, too.
RX: Some of us are still driving F-150's, the 4x4 version, for exactly THIS reason. They are pretty good till it gets deep enough to 'high center' the truck. Then the wheels no longer touch the road. I did that once about 30 years ago and my wife, who was with me, still won't let me forget that one because we had to walk 1/2 mile across the tundra to the nearest house. We got home on snowmobiles, which was not her cup of tea. Got the truck loose when the county decided to reopen the road at 5:00AM.
ReplyDeleteAhh, the life of adventure in wintertime northern Hoosierland...
All The Best,
Frank W. James
I've seen snow twice in my entire life. That's about once too often, as I hate the stuff. In my part of Texas, everything shuts down when we get the infrequent snow or ice storm, though, so there's usually not work or school to attend.
ReplyDeleteDrive safe, better late than never.
ReplyDeleteJim
Roberta, you always did strike me as being a pickup truck kinda woman; now, to complete the fantasy, do you right-this-minute have jumper cables?
ReplyDeleteHave jumper cables? Of course I do! And an air compressor.
ReplyDeleteYou mean some people don't?
Count me in with Frank - except mine's a Chevy Z71. The full length running boards don't help the high centering problem, but they do keep the paint on the rocker panels for 95% of my driving.
ReplyDeleteBeen there done that with the "ramming speed, full speed ahead" when challenged by a big drift. Once the grain scoop shovel saved my hiney, and once a tractor had to pull me out! The rest of the time, I made it.
Do you remember when vehicles had manual chokes? One of the great "tricks" with a manual choke ... and a manual transmission ... when stuck in snow.
ReplyDeleteStuff it into 2nd, pull the choke out ... and the wheels will just turn over. Get out ... and push yourself out of the snow drift. (Reverse works, too.)
Ah ... those were the simpler days.
Regards.
My '74 MGB had a manual choke. Of course, I could push-start it on a level or slightly down-hill grade, and occasional-y I had to. There's nothing quite like having to catch up with your car, leap in, punch the clutch and put it in first only to have it cough, sputter...and not quite start.
ReplyDeleteMy Dad's IH panel truck went the choke one better, with a symmetrically-place knob on the right side of the dash marked "T:" it was a hand throttle, which overrode the gas pedal and would stay where you set it. Between that and a "granny low" first gear, the truck could wander off on its own.