Yesterday, Papaw, Ma, and I took a little trip in Ma’s new Kia. We headed up to Breckinridge to check on the lease and on the way; we decided to swing by the Necessity cemetery to look at the graves of Papaw’s grandparents and assorted aunts and uncles. Although Necessity is just a wide spot in the road, it wasn’t hard to find the cemetery. Ma made short work of the cattle gate at the entrance (you could tell that she has done this a few times before). So we enter and drive up the dirt/gravel road a bit, then we get out and wander around until we had checked out all of the family graves. When we started to leave, I was driving and just pulled forward intending to make a big inverted U shape. And who could see anything wrong with that idea? Unfortunately, and in spite of us being in what is predicted to be a 10 year drought in Texas, we had just gone through a couple of days of heavy rain. See what’s coming? Yep, I got us hopelessly stuck in the mud. We tried everything to get unstuck. Picture all three of us, in all combinations, taking turns trying to push either backwards or forwards and all we succeeded in doing was to jam the car up next to a fence and post. All that did was make it harder to get in or out of the driver’s side. Ma finally started gathering branches and twigs to put in front of the tires—but that didn’t work. She even tried taking the pad out of the trunk area and putting it in front of the tires. But that didn’t work either. Perhaps the only saving grace was that the kind folks in Necessity had built an outhouse right near where we were stuck. The curious thing about it, though, is that the outhouse is a three seater. Now can you just picture three funeral attendees sitting side by side taking care of their business? Begs the question.
In any event, we finally just gave up our fruitless efforts, and called for help. Once again, thank God for cell phones! We reached a tow truck operator in Breckinridge who got to us in less than 30 minutes and hauled us out. We slung mud from the tires for miles! And what a mess of mud there is inside this brand new car. But the carwash will take care of that, and we have new memories of Vaughn adventures. Oh, and one more thing—Papaw and Ma have been tremendous good sports about the whole affair. Much better than the time I nearly destroyed their garage when I rammed into the center support column. But that’s another story.
