Got 22 tons of gravel delivered today dump got stuck in the mud had to dig out behind the wheels to lay some gravel for him to back up onto then laid down a gravel path . He got it out. I leveled the gravel to almost done and then the sky’s opened up . Picture is before I started
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A truckload of stone . . . stuck in the mud. Brought back a memory, painful at the time but funny ever since.
Late '80s, or maybe 1990, I was a commercial hay producer. Cut about 60--80 acres of alfalfa (and much else), 5 cuttings a year. Needed an application of lime on a 32 acre field. Don Graham was the local lime guy, he had a hopper truck, I want to say 18 ton capacity? with a spinning thing on the rear that distributed the ground white stone. I was on Don's list, eager to get my lime so I could work the ground, and I knew who all was ahead of me on the list.
Came in at noon one day for dinner and spied Don's truck bogged down at Ray's place a mile south of me. Then saw a huge wrecker sometime later pulling him out of the sandy wet ground. I called Don. "Hey, I've got good solid ground you can stay on top of." He said he'd come by (still had the load he couldn't spread at Ray's place). I met him at the gate to my quarter section down the road and climbed up into the cab. As we traveled across the place back to the 32 acres he said, "I don't know, CB, it looks a bit shaky." "Oh no, Don, it's the high side of the place, we'll be fine." And I believed it.
We pulled into the field, and it was like driving on top of Jello. The ground shook & rippled around us. We made one pass halfway across, spreading lime, before his truck just sank in the sand. He called the wrecker that had recently returned to town after pulling him out of Ray's place. We waited an hour. Wrecker came, hooked onto Don's truck, and the cable just pulled the wrecker backwards. Lots of shoveling. We had to unload lime (crushed stone) from the truck to lighten Don's truck. Did I mention that it was 102 degrees? (Oklahoma summer) Me and Don shoveling till he was played out. Don hopped down from the truck and groaned, "Oh, my back." I kept shoveling. The wrecker busted one of the cast pull hooks on the front of Don's truck, and straightened the other. And ruined the spinner on the rear and one mudflap when trying to draw the truck backwards.
Company's at the door, it's poker night. Gotta go.
We got the truck out. Don tried to absorb the wrecker bill. I felt bad about everything.