Willys

Inspirational song: Sugar Magnolia (Grateful Dead)

A day wasted on a failed mission is not actually wasted if you come home with an awesome story.

Yesterday Mr S-P left super early in the morning to go up to his property, do some work, and play around on 4WD trails that might come close to accessing his land over the top of the mountain on the other side from where he usually hikes in. He worked for a while as intended, but when he was up on the back side of the mountain, halfway up a steep, steep slope, he found his path blocked by a steel gate, with government notices on it that the "road" was closed. He came back a little earlier than he expected, but he came home with a plan. There is a wide spot in the road, a large turnaround-slash-parking lot where the well-groomed county maintained roads give way to the much rougher tracks that lead to the various private properties. It's a spot where weekenders show up with a ton of large garbage and a carload of guns and ammo, and they often make those things meet in the middle. Earlier this year, someone brought an X-Box and shot holes in it in this area, but more often than not, the folks with guns are just a-holes who have used guns to turn live trees into stumps.

Yesterday, something new and different (no, scratch that.. something OLD and different) showed up in this spot. It was most of a rusted-out hulk of a 1955 Willys. There wasn't a whole lot of it there, but there was enough to get him dreaming about bringing this thing back to life. He made a point of telling me how the glass on the back window was still pristine, like this was a remarkable detail. He had no idea where it came from, nor who owned it, but he was loath to see it shot to pieces by the weekenders. He made a plan to go back up as soon as he possibly could, to rescue it if he could. He swapped out his truck for one a little beefier that could pull a heavily laden trailer, and he borrowed a trailer from the Jeep salvage yard where he has been doing contract work. I told him I wanted to go too, if for no other reason, than I wanted the story.

We made it to the wide spot in the road, and the Willys was still there, with no bullet holes or anything more catastrophic than already existed the day before. So we started looking it over. We were just starting the salvage operation when a guy in a pickup drove up. He wasn't super freaked out (thankfully!), but he did explain that it was his hulk of a vehicle, not garbage. He got it as far as he could before some mishap befell his efforts, and he had to leave it where it lay. He even apologized for laying claim to it, knowing that we were expecting to salvage it. I think he was truly shocked when we shrugged and asked him whether he wanted help moving it to his property, since we were already there, with tools and a trailer.

The rain started right as we set to work. It didn't really slow us down, but it did distinctly cool us off. Most of my job was running tools back and forth, and keeping an eye on the jack and jack stand, to call out a warning when things started to tip. After nearly an hour of working in the rain, it became apparent that this vehicle was not going to be moved today. We didn't come back with a new project, or a carcass to sell off on the internet. We did finally meet one of the new neighbors, the one who bought the property from the prime jerk who was a danger to everyone up there, and I feel like we have made a friend. And best of all, I have a fresh story to tell.