On a String and a Prayer
“My name is Jim Denton.” I looked up from my son’s bike chain that I
was tightening to see a man standing in front of me, his hand was offered
forward. A little boy, maybe five was
hiding behind him, and a little girl of three or so was clinging to his left
leg. I stood up and shook his hand. “I noticed the canoe in your garage. Don’t see many of those around these parts.” ‘These parts’ were Henderson, Nevada near Las
Vegas, where we were living at the time.
“I suppose you’re right,” I responded with a chuckle
and a glance back over my shoulder at the open garage door. “We’re from Wisconsin,” I added. “When my company moved us out here I didn’t
want to leave it behind.” “Wisconsin –
they do a lot of hunting and fishing up there!”
His excitement seemed to be growing.
“Yes, we do.” “Do you do any?” he
probed further. “Yes, I do.” “Well, I’m from Mississippi, and I do some
hunting and fishing myself,” he said with a large and growing grin. We began sharing more insights into our mutual
love of outdoor pursuits.
Jim turned out to be a member of the Air Force – about
75% of our neighborhood was Air Force. Like
the rest, Jim worked at Nellis Air Force Base.
I had no idea from the innocent start of our friendship that he was a
bit crazy. I didn’t learn about the
crazy part until several months later.
Jim and I turned out to both be interested in archery
hunting for mule deer. We decided to
hunt together and we invested several weekends scouting different potential
hunting spots. Our most adventurous scouting
trip was to the mountains northeast of Tonopah.
One of the claims of fame of the little town [it may be true of all
towns, but out west it seems especially important that each town have a claim
to fame – preferably involving a famous lawman or outlaw] is that Wyatt Earp
moved there in 1902 and opened the Northern Saloon.
We were able to explore the backcountry with Jim’s
1964 International Scout. It was appropriate
that Jim was a military man because that truck was as close to riding in a tank
than I ever hoped to get. It guzzled
gasoline, and shook noticeably even on the best of roads. It was best driven off-road because then you
didn’t notice the shaking so much.
We were about fifteen miles off the highway and making
our way out as the sun was getting low in the west and we both needed to be at
work early the next day. It was about 240
miles home once we reached pavement.
Jim suddenly turned the steering wheel hard left. He had noticed a faint two-track and wanted
to check it out. We climbed a bit and
then the trail leveled off. We
stopped. There, in front of us was a
wide valley that had obviously burned out a few years before. The black scorch marks from the fire were
very evident. But what caught our eyes
was that the sagebrush was growing back in – bluish green and thick. A group of about twenty mule deer jumped to
their feet and headed over the next ridge.
“Let’s drive down in there and take a little walk,”
Jim suggested. He put the truck in gear
and we began to ease down the slope.
Suddenly the truck lurched to the right and we found ourselves off the
trail. I was about to ask him what that
was all about when he looked at me, shrugged his shoulders and he spun the
steering wheel around with just one finger.
“We lost steering.”
We got out and crawled underneath the front end. The tie rod for the right front tire was no
longer attached. We managed to kind of
reassemble it – sort of like putting pieces of a jigsaw back together. The problem was that the bolt that held the coupling
together that connected the steering had sheered off. The situation was not good.
We discussed walking out. It would take hours just to get back to the
highway. “If we had anything to hold
that rod in place I might be able to back it out of here. We can then at least drive as far as possible
before we have to walk.” I had an
idea. I rummaged in my pack and produced
a six-foot piece of buck-string that a friend had given me years ago. I had carried around in my pack for
years. I grabbed it and climbed back
under the truck. Jim held the coupling
together and I began to wind the rawhide as tightly as I could around it.
Jim got in and fired up the tank. I decided to stand back and see what
happened. Amazingly, Jim was able to back
up onto the trail and he crept up the hill, and got turned around at the top. We began to creep along the trail towards the
highway. It took us well over an hour to
cover the distance to the highway, but we at least made it that far. We decided to see if we could make it to Tonopah
and began creeping along the edge of the road at about fifteen miles per
hour. We decided not to push the speed
because we were certain the steering would come apart again, and we didn’t want
to be going too fast when it did.
It was late when we made it to Tonopah. I don’t know what is there these days, but in
1987 there was a single repair shop and it, and the rest of the town for that
matter, was locked up tight on Sunday nights.
We did stop at the phone booth and Jim called his wife Debbie to tell
here what we were dealing with. We had
no choice but to keep on going. If you
want to know what nothing looks like, you can find it most any night on highway
95 in Nevada. Nothing was exactly what
we saw – no help, no other cars, no police officers.
Amazingly, as dawn was beginning to show itself in the
east we made it to North Las Vegas. I
suggested to Jim that we should pull into the first service station we come to,
but he said he didn’t see any reason why we couldn’t make it the last fifteen
miles to our homes. I pointed out that
we were now driving down a major road with growing traffic to the right and
left of us. If that steering gave way
then we’d be bound to collide with somebody no matter which way the truck decided
to steer itself. Jim was undeterred – I began
to worry that he seemed a bit obsessed with making it now – complete victory or
nothing!
An hour later we pulled into his driveway. I grabbed my gear and walked a few doors down
to my house. Michelle was awake and
worried. We hugged.
Because of Jim’s work it was a full two weeks later
when he pulled into my driveway wearing a huge smile and driving a brand-new
pickup truck. “Just picked her up today!” “Today?” I asked. How have you been getting around these past
two weeks?” “That rawhide did the trick –
that old truck rode just fine, so I kept driving her until I could trade her
in. I got a good trade-in too.” “What did the dealer say about your steering?” “They never asked, and I never told them.”
“For He will give
"True, but there's no need to push it!"
Deacon Dan 7:26-24
His Peace <><
Deacon Dan
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