Beware:
the high cost of “free things”

There are two type’s of people in this world, those that collect things, and those that don’t. Most car people belong to that first category. That would include me. And the best type of stuff is that which is “free”. Recently I had a call from a friend of a friend that told me of a person that was moving to Louisiana and needed to clean up his property. He had lots of “stuff” that he had collected , a Corvette motor, a trailer, lots of misc. things. I mentioned the motor to Dave and he said he would be interested in having it, since he once had a Corvette. So we agreed that we would help each other pick this stuff up, he would get the motor, I would take the trailer.

It was a Saturday morning, back when it was cold, very cold. We took my old Ford pickup and arrived at the place about 10 am. The person who was moving was very generous. He not only gave Dave the engine, but he included an engine stand that he had made himself. The trailer was buried in blackbeery bushes, having sat for maybe 15 years. We put a chain on it and ripped it loose, only to find it was full of pine needles that were frozen into a solid mass. Remarkably the tires still had air in them, being about 50 ply house trailer wheels. It turned out that is was “sort of a trailer”. It was a pickup bed that happened to be setting on a old frame made from a house trailer. Close enough!

We loaded the pickup with Dave’s engine and stand and lots of extra stuff. We than hooked the “sort of a trailer” on the back and loaded a garden tractor that happened to be setting nearby. And some perfectly good metal, and a push bar, and a extra motor for the tractor. The “sorta trailer had no lights , or safety chain, and the hitch didn’t exactly fit my trailer ball. But we were loaded with “FREE STUFF” and ready to go.

We thanked the generous guy and headed out on highway 174 to head for home. As soon as we got on the highway and hit maybe 15 mph the “sort of trailer” started jumping up and down so violently that the junk, I mean stuff, was almost going over the side and into the road. It seems that the tires that still held air after all those years had become the shape of a capitol “D”. Flat on the bottom. Any speed over 15 mph threatened to launch our “stuff” onto the highway. So, we decided to sneak from one turnout to the next, carefully watching the rearview mirror and franticly waving our arms to warn upcoming traffic that we were almost stopped in the road. I told Dave, “if we can just make it to the You Bet road turn off I know a short cut that we can take almost to home“ . Well, we made it without killing anybody. The name of the “short cut “ is called Lost Lake road. To anyone who has traveled on this road, no more needs to be said. To the rest of you, think “Donner Party”. The road is , to say the least, unimproved. But at least we didn’t have high speed traffic bearing down on us. We had traveled about a mile when encountered the first water hazard. Actuality, it was more of a frozen pond. Remember it was cold. The puddle was frozen to maybe 4 inches thick and pretty much filled the road. I put the truck in 4wd and managed to power through it. The next one was a little bigger, but, again, we “pedaled to the metal” and made it through. Then the “big daddy”. This puddle was maybe 20 feet across and had a small tree lying in the middle of it, frozen solid in the ice. Dave say’s “can you back this thing up”? Ugh, no way dude. Can you drive over it? Not with this truck. It is obvious that no one has passed this way for some time. Now what?

So Dave and I walk out on the ice and try to pry this small tree out of our way. It is not moving. Dave remembers that the nice man gave us some big pieces of rebar steel. He gets a piece of it out of the trailer and proceeds to start bashing the ice around the tree. It is not hard to see what is going to happen. The ice starts to shatter and Dave goes in up to his shins. (snicker, snicker) I figured , well, he is wet, he can muscle this thing out of the way. Unfortunately, it still won’t move. So I try to help. I get hold of a small bush at the side of the road and with one hand on the tree and one on the bush, I try to pull it out. The bush lets go and I end up on my butt, the ice breaks and I go in up my waist, flat on my back. Now we are both wet and muddy, so together we pull this SOB out of the road.

The rest of the trip is uneventful. We make it home and head for the shower. Oh yeah, we run the numbers on the “corvette engine”. It is a basic passenger car block, two bolt mains, nothing special. But……it was FREE!!
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