The Rock Wall

Those of you who know me (and that’s most of the community) have often heard me say, “Only in a small town,” or “I like living in a small town.” Or “I couldn’t run a newspaper in a big city.”

Well, a couple of events in the past week just helped cement my preference for where we live.

Last Tuesday evening I was fixing to go home about 9 or so to get some sleep before I had to get up a 3 a.m. to go pick up your newspaper in Nevada. I had seen a black cloud in the northeast and it suddenly arrived with gusts of wind and some pretty hard rain with a little hail. Since there wasn’t any shelter on Main Street where I was sitting, I decided to go on home.

The further north I got on Main St., the harder the downpour and hail got. Just as I got to the north city limits, the bottom fell out. Rain and hail hit my pickup so hard I couldn’t even see the hood. By then I had slowed to a crawl. Before I could stop, I felt my pickup as it was going into the west ditch. I surely couldn’t see where I was.

I had recently complied with the law and changed my studded snow tires for highway tread. I still thought my four-wheel drive would get me out of the ditch. It didn’t.

One lady pulled into the driveway ahead of me, got out and came up the back slope wading the stacked up hail to check on me. She stayed a long time, but her four wheeler wasn’t equipped for the job so she went on.

Chance Cyr and another fireman stopped the truck as they came back into town after watching for storms. They didn’t have a log chain so they couldn’t help.

Then Clint Stacy stopped. He left and came back with a guy and a wrecker. That got me out.

I wish I knew who all stopped to check on me and the name of the guy with the wrecker.  I told him to go to the Sun office and Kimball would pay him, but he hasn’t showed up. If someone will give me your names, I’ll gladly thank you publicly.

Then Sunday, I was driving us to church in Kimball’s car when the low tire pressure light came on at the Cedar/St. Clair County line on Hwy. DD. I thought I’d pump it up after church. Wrong O. By the time we got to the Barger residence, the right back tire was thumping. I pulled over at the next curve.

We put the electric tire pump on it. After several minutes that pump hadn’t made any progress. I had tire pluggers. We both felt the tire over and couldn’t detect the leak.

So, we started pulling stuff out of the trunk so we could get the donut tire out from under the trunk and the floor jack out of the trunk.

About then a young man and his mother pulled up from the north and stopped. He pulled into the road where I was parked and took off his shirt. To make a long sweaty story short, in a few minutes Tommy Iseman had the tire changed while his mother, Vickie, encouraged all of us. They moved a year ago from Maryland to a house at Hwy. DD and Cedar County Road 50, Vickie said. We know it as Lebeck. One of the Cartwright daughters and her husband had to get the plat changed because they wanted to put the house in the middle of the main street.

We got to Concord about 40 minutes late. Tommy and his mother may have been on time to the Church of God (Holiness) since services start later there, they said.

Kimball got the flat fixed Monday. Allison’s said it looked like a bolt had punctured it.

Folks, you don’t know how comforting it is to live in a community like this. Thank you seems inadequate. KL