My truck!

Story a day. Thirty minutes after bedtime again. Hm.

The story of how my truck caught fire, leaving me stranded in the northwoods, is as long as it is epic. Gather 'round, and I shall tell you a tale!

 

See, the thing about my truck was... It always had overheating problems
And

I'm not sure where to start.

It had heating problems since day one. The radiator system just didn't work and we didn't have any means of fixing it. We tried replacing the cap, but that wasn't it, so any fix would be out of reach, expense wise. I suppose the thing was going down hill since day one, so it was bound to break down eventually.

(((Whoa

That statement actually makes me happy that it went up in flames, rather than just peacefully dying and refusing to start. Weird.)))

Anyway

We were twigging, my brother and I. Along with one of my cousins and his friend.

Twigging is a bad occupation. We couldn't cut firewood anymore because it was fall and we couldn't tell which trees were dead and dried out and which weren't. We cut the branches off of balsam trees, quickly as we could, for eight hours a day. Loaded them into our trucks and sold them to a local wreath warehouse, so they could be woven into symbols of disposable income.

We got roughly 1800 pounds of sticks loaded into the back of our trucks and took off for town.

Town was pretty far away, roughly seven miles down the highway. There were little villages along the way, but nothing substantial. All of them had piddly populations, probably less than a hundred. It was just a logging highway, basically.

Less than halfway to town, our truck started overheating so we pulled to the side. The transmission oil had all leaked out--the people who originally designed the truck made it so that the tranny oil would leak when the truck was overheating, so the truck would be forced to stop and nothing would warp and get fucked up. Anyway, we didn't care about that. We wanted our money from the balsam boughs.

We had a drum of hydraulic oil in the back of the truck, filled the transmission with that, and kept moving.

We leaked oil all the way there. Every two miles or so, we'd run out and have to stop to fill the transmission up again, and we kept going.

There was a little hill on the way up to the warehouse--we got stuck on it. Couldn't make it up. Traffic was building up behind us. People were getting pissed. Some guy drove up the side of the hill, over the grass and around us. He had tow wires on the back of his truck and towed us in to the warehouse, where we unloaded our truck and were paid our hundred dollars.

The truck miraculously started, we started driving out, on our way down the hill on the other side we ran out of gas and stalled out on the dividing line of the highway. We were blocking both lanes completely--and we had a wagon hitched to the back, so I mean we were blocking both lanes completely.

A logging truck was coming. My brother desperately tried to start the engine, I volunteered to get out and push, as soon as I started stepping out the truck started again and we sped off and parked in a nearby parking lot.

Didn't stop there though.

My cousin and his friend came in their truck, stopped by us.

They had an empty gas bucket in their truck. I don't know why--but they volunteered to stay by my truck and let my brother and I take their truck to town to get gas. Not sure why the switch was necessary.

We went to the nearest gas station which was in the city about seven miles out, came back with three gallons of gas because it was all we could afford with the cash we had on hand, and by the time we got back to our truck, my cousin's truck's tank was empty.

After we sorted the problem out and switched back into our normal vehicles, we started heading back home. We were totally homefree. My truck was running smoothly, it was no longer overheating or leaking any oils.

And on the hill--on the one paved stretch of road in the entire village, my truck died. All the oil leaked. My brother revved out the engine. We were stuck.

It was raining outside. It was drenching, dreary, and cold.

I stepped out, made some smartass remark; "On the bright side, nothing else can go wrong!" and walked a few feet out. When I turned, I noticed that the truck, along with the long oilslick we had left all the way up the hill, was on fire. I yelled at my brother to get out and we stood in the rain, watching the fire. It was amazing.

I shouted "Forward!" (that being the wisconsin state motto,) and started laughing at my funny, funny joke.

Brother just stared at me like I was nuts.

Author's Note

Forward!

Reviews

[Chloe Madison Taylor.]

I KNOW THIS STORY I KNOW THIS STORY!

[Hedra Helix]

Hah ha, rambly a*s story. Nice visual though of that fire slick. ;)

Ahh man, car troubles drag at my friggin soul, I would have prolly spontaneously combusted had I been there. ;) Yay bigger fire, smells like asian bar-b-Q.

[Wisconsin]

If you stepped out into the forest, off the road, and walked through it, you'd never reach the other side. All of my work was in the woods. Every one of the sparse villages and the town were surrounded by it and there was no way out.

[windmill]

(seven miles is far??

you weren't -really- in the woods.
seventy miles is far away.
:P )

aw god... take one truck to fill an empty truck, only to empty the transport truck... -groan-
b*****d life.


((that's the wisconsin state motto?? really?? hm. kinda lame... suppose it's better than ours... dunno what it is, off hand. i can only remember it's lame. i guess with one word, you don't exactly have much room for lame-ness...
har har))

... you, with that crazy glint in yer eye...