OK, Third Time, after two complete disappearances; one near done, gone, so built a second using the pictures [sort of…]. Last night the original mysteriously reappeared, was reworked, posted and…had vanished without a trace by morning. So, YET again;
Monday Willey, having clocked 4500 miles since last sighted, fired up the loader and dove into the worrisome wet of the bottoms to finish
while Mark shuttled back and forth, taking away cat and then loader, the land left without heavy equipment for the first time since Hallowe’en
and quite quiet.
Early Tuesday morning tire noise amplified by the cold announced the approach of the first of several Dodge diesels
Keith’s crew, as promised, followed by mud from Cedarville, poured by ten
but the second truck never showed. While they finished the first load I drove up 447 past Squaw
and found the second truck, an old Kenworth…uh-oh…the second truck
had fucken ROLLED.
The driver was almost out of the canyon when tightening turns and low brakes caught him by surprise; lost it on the first, rolled into the hill; the second twist would have put him in the gully with consequences more dire. He caught a ride back to Cedarville with the owner’s wife instead of in the ambulance which, this being America, would have wiped out most of a year’s wages.
I headed home
to take a late walk in great light
and later still Keith was back to strew straw and lay tarps against the freeze.
Despite staying up late towing the Wreck of the Kenworth home Bob [owner-operator] drove down through a snowstorm to finish the job,
which, after some ministrations to frozen valves on the watertank,
went fine.
Along with the mud came the welcome news that the driver was ok, just a little bruised and shaken, and hopefully the truck’s motor could be salvaged, the rest being pretty much a ruin.
With the concrete put to bed until Saturday pretty much all the pieces of our long-awaited puzzle, or whatever it’s been, have fallen into place
save for the ponds’ slow fillings…which remain problematic despite
our approaching Season of Greetings.
M.
It’s still pretty much a puzzle.
Those vast, horizontal Nevadan landscapes tend to lull this reader into thinking high drama only exists in the frenzied, manic crush of urban America. Wrong. Your chilling (literally) tales from Wall befit a thriller mystery movie script: The overdue mud truck, alarming wreckage out on Hwy 337, miraculous escape from major injury (or worse), late night tarp and hay salvation, puzzlingly-slow pond filling…not to mention disappearing blog posts. OK, I’m hungry for the next installment and hope it gets thru whatever interference the administrators-elect and their internet henchmen have in store for you. Oh yes, every good mystery-thriller must have conspiracy theories.
Come next post all, or maybe nothing, will be revealed..Count on it!
I had that disappearing post problem about a year ago. Never did find out why.
They towed that rolled mixer with a full drum? I’ll bet that tightened some boys up.
Well however they did it there was no trace by Thursday…cowboys; “live the cowboy Way, leave the cowboy way” as it says at the coffin maker’s [plain pine boxes] in Cedarville. And you, Walt, having driven up that canyon a couple of years back, can picture what they had to contend with…although traffic wouldn’t have been an issue.
True that. No pesky Caltrans weigh stations to contend with either.
Weigh stations? We don’ got show you no stinkin’ weigh stations…only weigh here’s the Cowboy Way. Works good…
The shadows on the open hood and a certain uniformity in the color of the man-made surfaces makes for a fine composition and a certain mystery. Very nice.
and the dog version of Grumann’s Chinese Theatre….they know they are the stars.
They know it…because they ARE!