Jeeps to the Rescue

 – Neil Matkin (Copyright 2013)

It was Friday evening when Jan and I took a short drive to the Jeep dealership after dining with friends. We had both purchased Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Sahara’s the year before and had taken them off road many times with great success. We felt relatively confident in my stock rig’s ability to navigate the gravel trail in front of the Jeep dealership while admiring the two dozen or so new Jeeps parked out in front aligned nicely in a row. Perhaps we were overly confident having successfully navigated the “Four Wheel Drive Required” trails of the Big Bend National Park in Southwest Texas the Christmas before. But this was gravel and grass and, admittedly, it was immediately following a major frog strangling Louisiana rain. Frankly, we didn’t give this “off road” trek any real thought. This may be henceforth referenced as mistake number one.

I was particularly interested in Jeeps sporting the Commando Green paint scheme because when Jan had gotten hers nearly a year before that particular green was rare and seldom seen in these parts. We had never once seen one prior to receiving hers and it was a special order. After she had selected that paint color though, they popped up everywhere. So, as we drove along the short gravel path, I counted aloud to five for each of the Jeeps that shared the exact same hue as Jan’s! We crawled down the road and the more I counted the more irritated Jan became (in that good natured wifely way that meant I would certainly pay for my irascibility at a later time). She loved her Jeep’s color and was even convinced that the workers remodeling the house across the street from us had stolen “her” green for the doors and shutters. To be fair though, it was an amazingly close match which made seeing the color virtually inescapable!

We crossed over the second of three driveways into the dealership and set out on the next stretch of grass (no gravel) continuing to look at the row of new Jeeps to our immediate right. To our left was a sizable ditch filled with a large pond of water from the intense rainstorm earlier that day – the likes of which you only understand if you have been in Louisiana for any length of time. We used to live in a neighborhood called Atlee Lake Estates in Virginia that was a bunch of houses around a body of water only slightly bigger than this ditch! Louisiana rains often consisted of buckets upon buckets of water just coming down from the heavens turning any recess into ponds and temporary lakes not unlike the big ditch to our immediate left.

I gleefully counted number six on the green Jeep irritation scale and then number seven after which I quietly and quite unexpectedly eased into a trough at 3 mph. Realizing I had dropped down at a precipitous angle but thought my Jeep would go through the miniature ravine quite easily. After all, this wasn’t my first rodeo. I had been through much worse, right? Remember the Big Bend reference? The DRY Big Bend reference? As soon as I had the thought though I did wonder if I had truly gone through worse. Try as we might, my Jeep…MY JEEP…was stuck completely and unable to get any traction as the on and off road – mostly on I suspected – tires filled up with mud. I dropped it into four-wheel low to extract myself but to no avail. We were stuck and now my beautiful maroon Jeep was covered entirely in mud…which under other circumstances, I would have actually enjoyed!

Jan got the insurance card out of the dash and I called our insurance company. Great! Great until I was informed that it would be two and a half hours before a tow truck could come and yank us out. I could walk to our house and get Jan’s Commando Green Jeep in two and a half hours but fortunately, just at the moment we most needed him, a good Samaritan came driving to our rescue even as I was on the phone! I politely told the insurance representative nevermind and ended the call to greet our rescuer.

To my great initial appreciation, a jacked up, big wheeled, two-door Jeep piloted by a fellow named Tiny roared up. “Y’all stuck?” he asked. “Yup,” I answered. He asked how it happened and I told him and he just laughed and laughed (it’s funny if someone else is stuck apparently). I could see in his eyes that he had labeled me a novice. Fair enough. I was the one after all who had gotten himself stuck in what appeared to be a very little ditch, albeit very muddy! He decided to pull around and get behind us and jerk us out. He had all the equipment. High lift jack, snatch and tow straps, shackles, bells, whistles, cymbals, magic eight ball, etc. Well, almost all the equipment. Back to that in just the briefest of moments…

Tiny had three choices to pull in behind us on the narrow path between the new Jeeps and the sizable ditch-pond-lake. First, he could back up onto the pavement the way he had come and then drive around behind us. This seemed like quite a sensible approach to the problem. Second, he could pass between us and the ditch on a just-wide-enough-narrow strip of grass to carefully get in behind us. Easy as pie really. The third option required testosterone and moxie and to my eyes it was not a REAL option. This third option though, this is the option Tiny chose without even blinking. He drove straight for the ditch-pond-lake-sea and made a valiant but ultimately doomed attempt to wheel across in his jacked up, two-door, Jeep with big ol’ off road tires. It was just like Moses crossing the Red Sea…if Moses had only gotten HALF WAY ACROSS!

Emphasis should be placed on the word “attempt.” Another cool word is sink – as in like a stone or a heavy Jeep. Not giving up, Tiny dropped the Jeep into granny low and sprayed water and mud and grass and maybe small fish, frogs, and amoebas twenty or twenty-five feet into the air. His Jeep, whatever color it once was, resembled mine now except that I was mired mostly on land while water was lapping just slightly ABOVE his door sill. No doubt about it, like it or not, Tiny was gonna get wet getting out unless he could pull off a Moses move or Jesus walk on this particular body of water. Yup, no doubt about it – the future looked damp for Tiny.

Hot engine parts turned water to steam and there he sat under the bright glare of the dealership lights about to get his feet wet in what looked like a stadium rock show worth of newly generated steam and fog. If he had jumped out in the water with a microphone and started belting out a Meatloaf tune it would have made perfect sense and I would have looked for the hidden camera crew. Gotta give him his due though. It was a noble, if over confident attempt to help a fellow Jeep driving stranger in trouble. Perhaps Tiny had navigated the “Four Wheel Drive Required” roads in Big Bend Country too and had a big dose of overconfidence just like yours truly. Hard to tell as Tiny had gotten very quiet and contemplative immediately prior to stepping out of his rig into the muck. It didn’t seem prudent to laugh aloud so I swallowed hard and held my laughter ‘til I nearly experienced an accident. It was indeed hilarious when it was someone else stuck!

I chose this opportunity to renew my conversation with the insurance representative. I told Tiny I was calling and he said to tell him that there were two Jeeps and that he’d just pay the tow truck driver when they got here. I was informed that it was still going to be two to three hours to get a tow truck out here. The first place they had called – which was just down the road a mile or so – said that their truck was down for repairs on this particular Friday night. A likely story I was thinking and I wondered whether my insurance folks actually paid enough to be worth getting out that late at night for most trucks. Probably not. After two more failed tries I asked the nice operator to keep calling and call me back when he found someone who could be here in under an hour or at most an hour and a half.

Now that Tiny had emerged on dry-ish land and informed of the insurance company retrieval schedule, he determined it a prudent move to call his wife and get her to come on out. It was a couple of minutes later that he reported that his wife was on the way. He was having better luck than I was with my insurance company and his wife was now en route with a four-wheel drive Chevrolet Suburban – ETA of less than 10 minutes. I smiled to myself and privately wondered how many more four-wheel drive vehicles we might be able to get stuck out in front of the Jeep dealership. It occurred to me that we might possibly break a Guinness World Record if we tried hard enough. Then I couldn’t help but wonder whether or not there was a world record for Jeeps stuck in front of a Jeep dealership. Probably not. We might be plowing new ground.

About that time, a THIRD Jeep drove by on Airline Road and we saw it do a quick you-ee (how does one properly spell that I wonder when referencing a U-turn?) and head back in our direction. This Jeep was lifted at least 5 inches and had bigger-than-Tiny’s-tractor-sized-tires! This monstrosity pulled up and it was a lifted Wrangler Unlimited. Now, for the record, unlimited doesn’t mean it won’t get stuck – it just means it has four doors and a longer wheelbase which takes up more room in the mud when stuck. I noticed my wife had gone missing and I started looking around for her. It was then that I noticed she was browsing new Jeeps and was herself looking at a brand new Commando Green Rubicon model – Jeep’s most capable factory equipped off road version. Sigh. I wondered if I could possibly avoid trading in our current Jeeps. Probably not.

Jeep number three had arrived late to the party and was driven by a lean young man whose name escapes me sadly enough but his wife and two sons were on board. I’m going to call him Matthew but it could’ve been Alan or Tom. His rig was jacked up and had cut away fender flares and off road tires and blindingly bright hood mounted lights and a camera that rode atop the windshield to properly capture his exploits in real time. Like Tiny’s rig before, he had off road bumpers and he appeared to be ready for bear. Although to be fair, I hadn’t seen him brave the ditch-pond-lake-sea-ocean yet so there was no way to really know if he was that courageous or not.

“Y’all both stuck?” he asked. Tiny and I both nodded our heads in sync and I explained what had happened. Jan, who had continued in her abandonment but had now run out of Commando Green Rubicons to consider decided to rejoin us and started talking to Matthew’s wife and kids. The two little boys in the back were very cool and I told them, “Your daddy’s going to pull us out of this mess – he’s a hero like Batman and Superman!” They both giggled with delight and I thought I detected a slight eye roll from the front passenger seat but I could’ve been mistaken as I was at an odd angle.

Jeep number three pulled around and got right behind me, attached Tiny’s tow strap to our bumper hook and pulled me out lickety split in five seconds flat. He then pulled back around and backed in at an angle toward Tiny’s rig planning to hook the tow strap up to both trailer tow hitches butt to butt. Problem was that Tiny didn’t have a pin for his trailer hitch and I didn’t have a pin for mine either and Matthew didn’t have a spare. I offered a large, industrial strength screwdriver as a substitute but Matthew wisely declined citing children in his Jeep and the danger of it going through his windshield if anything went wrong. Sounded prudent so fair enough.

Tiny’s wife arrived just in time in the four wheel drive Chevy Suburban and she and Tiny searched without success for the key to get the trailer hitch pin unlocked from their hitch so it could be used on Tiny’s Jeep to connect the tow strap.   I was walking around marveling that we had gone from two stuck Jeeps to one after privately hoping for more Jeeps in the mud hole. No success getting the trailer hitch pin unlocked so Matthew called a buddy to come up. The buddy was on duty in whatever job he had so he called his fiancé who lived just down the street and she got there only a few minutes later in Jeep number four – another jacked up big-wheeled tractor ready for action.   She was not overly happy to help and had been getting ready for bed when she had been pressed into duty at almost ten o’clock on a Friday evening. Tiny was tranquil and almost meditative albeit with bright, rosy red cheeks and his face filled with bemused consternation at this point. I would later remember this as a calm period for him.

Now, with all the goodies necessary to extract Tiny’s rig from the ditch, we hooked it all up and got ready to go. It was at this point that Tiny’s wife decided to start taking pictures with her iPhone from every angle imaginable and Tiny complained he was going to be on the Facebook “wall of shame” now to be sure. No longer looking meditative, Tiny had difficulty matching his wife’s broad and cheery smile as she took picture after picture. CLICK! SNAP! CLICK! the iPhone’s shutter sound went again and again. Picture after picture brought her increasing glee bordering on mirth. She took up close shots and then shots from far away, low and high shots from every angle as close as she could get to the giant mud hole that mire Tiny’s ride. She smiled even wider as she took pictures of the water lapping against the door of the stranded Jeep. Her smile would have normally been contagious but at the time it appeared to cause Tiny visibly growing unhappiness and his tranquil phase was a thing of the past.

Now with the pin arriving via his buddy’s Jeep via his buddy’s fiancé – who had since made it known yet again that she would much rather be in her apartment going to bed since that is where she was when called into service. Matthew hooked the two Jeeps up. Tiny waded knee deep to his ride sinking into the mud with each step. His wife took more pictures and Tiny paused to look back and glare in her general direction. Quite the opposite of Jeep number four, Mrs. Tiny seemed to be delighted to be there. Matthew commenced to pulling and successfully pulled him half way out of the deep mud and water. Unfortunately though, Tiny’s rig started angling toward a large concrete culvert on the edge of the pond. Both men got back out of the Jeeps and surveyed the situation further. Tiny’s wife took a whole new round of photos. The decision was made to get a different angle and try it again. This time, the Jeep came straight out and Tiny was free at last, free at last, free but embarrassed still and mud covered Jeep and man with documentary evidence steadily growing.

We were rolling up snatch straps and tow straps and getting ready to depart when a fairly irritated fellow pulled up in a loaded jet black Chrysler 300 pulled up and told us we needed to hold on a minute. He never identified himself as such but I think he may have been a dealership employee sleeping it off in the parking lot. The fiancé in Jeep number four blew him off, got in her Jeep and left to finish getting dressed for bed. Matthew, Tiny, and I were about to do the same when two police cars pulled up with blue lights flashing. The officers got out of their cars and talked to us through our windows and it was pretty clear they thought it was somewhat funny to have these fancy four wheel drive rigs stuck in front of the dealership. They could see what the complainant had apparently failed to observe – first, that we weren’t stealing Jeeps as apparently alleged. Second, that water in a ditch looks about the same whether or not Jeeps have been stuck in it or not! They let us all go quickly enough but then turned their attention to the fellow in the Chrysler as he was a bit erratic in somewhat incoherent ramblings. My guess was that he probably wouldn’t be driving any further that evening.

I took a couple of photos when we got home and again when I was gassing up the next day. I thought my mud covered Jeep looked pretty adventurous for having been stuck in a ditch. We drove by the dealership and, as I had remembered, it all looked pretty much the same as before with little evidence of the trail conquering exploits from the night before. We saw Matthew’s rig on the opposite side of the busy four lane just 50 feet from where all the action happened and we both grinned at one another and waved in passing. I’ve decided not to go off road in front of the dealership anymore until I get better equipment or true off road tires at least. Having braved the Jeep roads of Big Bend National Park in West Texas, I realized I just wasn’t up to mud and grass in a mostly flat section of dealership turf. Perhaps we would upgrade to a Rubicon or get a lift kit and bigger tires and a winch so we could follow Tiny’s example and get REALLY stuck. That Guinness award was still out there for us – I just felt it in my soul.

Epilogue: Going through a McDonald’s drive through for coffee the following Monday morning the attendant said, “WOW! Where in the world did you go?!?” I didn’t flinch as I told her something close to the truth, “We were muddin’ out in the Atchafalaya Basin near Henderson Swamp and nearly got stuck in eighteen foot of water!” She said, “WOW!” again and the legend rode on coffee in hand. It was raining when our black and silver Rubicon X’s arrived just two months later. First thing we did was to successfully wheel across that trough in front of the Jeep dealership. Yep, we were now proven and ready to ride – but we still didn’t try tackling the pond-lake-sea and haven’t to this day!