The Pioneer Woman had this to say on Twitter the other day:

@thepioneerwoman: When I married MM and vowed the whole “for better, for worse” thing, I did not think I was signing up to pull him out of the mud every day.

Had I a moment to tweet while in California, I could have posted the same, deleting “MM” (the Pioneer Woman‘s darling husband, Marlboro Man) and inserting “Honeydew,” my darling husband, who takes gittin’ stuck very philosophically, as it frequently happens to him or others under his instruction.  Occasionally, I am called, in all of my ineptitude, to pull him out.  I am his very last resort.

Honeydew grew up in the last house on the right on the last major left (Chief Mountain Highway) you can take in our area of the United States.  Chief Mountain Highway juts left from US Highway 89N and meanders on Glacier Park’s border to the Chief Mountain Border crossing into Canada.  The Chief Mountain Border is only open for a few months per year, and mostly allows for an easy crossing for tourists exploring both sides of the world’s first International Peace Park: Glacier (USA) / Waterton (Canada), also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  In some ways, Honeydew’s childhood home makes our current home, only fifteen minutes away, look metropolitan.  And Honeydew grew up gittin’ stuck, mostly in deep snow, as the plowing of Chief Mountain Highway is … sporadic.

I grew up on the Virginia/North Carolina border.  I did not grow up gittin’ stuck on any regular basis.  Now that I live near Babb, down a long, winding driveway through a stand of Aspen designed to hold deep snow, in a home that creates a windbreak frequently resulting in a six foot drift in front of the garage, I get stuck in a pattern that reminds me of Old Faithful’s current schedule – you can’t set your watch by me getting stuck, but it’s bound to happen sooner or later.  I know that half the problem is that the moment I feel the tires start to slip, or spin, I panic.

As has been explained to me by a number of capable people in my life, including Honeydew, when you start to get stuck, its best to take a deep breath, put her in four wheel drive high (because if you ever start off in four wheel drive, there’s no question you’ll get stuck – best to approach everything in two wheel drive – if you have to resort to four wheel drive low, you’re likely stuck for good), and ease up and back, up and back, until you’ve laid down some tracks and can get back into the main thoroughfare.  Well, that approach hasn’t worked for me just yet.  I throw her in four wheel low, hit the gas, spin the tires, and cry.  Then I generally turn the ignition to off, crawl into the back of the truck for the snow boots and coveralls I keep with me at all times, suit up, and start walking home.

Honeydew never panics, and is usually able to free himself from the snow’s sticky grip with no issue.  When he does get stuck, he doesn’t act like the world has come to an end, unlike some new near-Babb wives that come to mind.  Is it wrong to envy your husband?

When I was in California last month, Honeydew and I were out with one of Steve Park’s crews, gathering bees from a large yard and loading them onto trucks destined for the almond orchards.  Apparently, in this part of California, there are places where the earth, when saturated, becomes bottomless without warning.  There you are, happily driving along in your 1 ton truck with a full load of honeybees, admiring the cerulean sky, approaching an innocent patch of cheery grass.

And ten seconds later, without you even having panicked or spun the tires, there you are, in mud up to the truck’s axles.  Like this:

This is one stuck truck:

I had been peacefully doing the Modern Woman thang from the hood of Honeydew’s pickup, working on a motion for summary judgment, editing my “Behind the Blog” spot on Becoming Sarah, and twittering:

Upon seeing that the second truck was very, very stuck, I attempted to leap for my Blackberry, intent on getting Triple A (yeah, right), or Steve, or someone who might help us, on the line.  Honeydew plucked the phone from my fingers, told me to remove my laptop from his hood, and calmly went about the business of firing up his forklift to unload all of the bees from the bed of the stuck truck, so that he could pull it out of the viscous California mud.

Which, of course, he did.  And then pulled the truck out with no problem.  While I was sitting there too distraught to even take decent pictures of his efforts.

Have I mentioned that we make a great team?

I leave you with the lyrics to one of Honeydew’s all time favorite songs, The Truck Got Stuck, by the Canadian Corb Lund:

Well more rain than we’d seen for a thousand years
Caused financial joys and biblical fears
It caused some smiles it caused some tears
But more to the point of our story
For the first time in the collective memory,
That old brown prairie that had been so dry for so long was very muddy
Boggy and sticky
We’d pull one truck out and get another stuck in
And motors would roar and tires would spin
We’d sink right down, down to the diff, and we’d all take turns and do it again
Till no one could move, we’d call one more friend,
Come on out here, we need you…bring your truck

The Chev got stuck and the Ford got stuck
Got the Chev unstuck when the Dodge showed up
But the Dodge got stuck in the tractor rut
Which eventually pulled out the Ford
And the Dodge

I got me stuck in the mud, so I couldn’t rehearse
And Chavez too has missed his work
Reggie, he now fears the worst, he stood up his ex wife she called him a jerk
Course Holtman didn’t have nothing better do to, ‘cept ranch.

The Chev got stuck and the Ford got stuck
Got the Chev unstuck when the Dodge showed up
But the Dodge got stuck in the tractor rut
Which eventually pulled out the Ford

Well it was truck after truck, we all got stuck
‘cept the big old four by Hutterite truck
We all thought “lord are we in luck!”
But he wouldn’t come anywhere near us,
Mighty neighborly, mighty neighborly.

We used a lot of our backs, a little of our brains
We jacked up the jacks, and snugged up the chains,
We all did our very best to refrain from shovelin’.
We put what timber we had, underneath the wheels
And we was all out of sand, but managed to steal
Two sacks of the best modern canola seed you ever did see,
That ‘oughta give us some traction

The Chev got stuck and the Ford got stuck
Got the Chev unstuck when the Dodge showed up
But the Dodge got stuck in the tractor rut
Which eventually pulled out the Ford

We spread genetically modified canola seed
That was genetically modified for controlling the weeds
And for big old yields and margarine oil, raised hell all over that native prairie soil.
Agriculture Canada is definitely gonna be looking for us

2010.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

About these ads