I brought up trailers the other day when I was talking about my wife using the truck.  Honestly, though, she’s surely not the only person that has had trouble with trailers.  Seems like I remember Duh Niece’s Suburban having a dent in the rear quarter panel from an errant trailer maneuver.  However, keep in mind that she has never done anything embarrassing in her entire life.  I’m sure that someone else (probably her husband) was to blame for the trailer mishap.

    My favorite trailer disaster (sounds bad to say that) was when a guy by the nickname of Grimey was bringing a water trailer to the field where I was spraying soybeans one time.  Grimey had filled the 1000 gallon water trailer at the service station and headed out to the field where I was so that I could refill my spray tanks.  The bean field was at the bottom of a big hill and you had to go through a very large and hilly pasture to get there.

    Grimey had gotten the bosses’ four wheel drive pick-up to make sure he could pull the trailer up the hill.  This truck was generally reserved for special uses like the bosses going hunting or fishing.  When full the trailer would be between 9,000 and 10,000 pounds, but the truck weighed in at less than 5,000 pounds.  I saw him up at the top of the hill coming through the gate that separated the bean field from the pasture.  He was out of the truck closing the gap to make sure the cows didn’t get in the bean field.  I started out of the field thinking that I was going to meet him up top, but before I knew it, he was back in the truck and heading down the hill.

    The road was dirt, of course, and severely rutted by erosion and farm traffic up and down when it was wet.  The ruts were several inches deep and Grimey tried to keep the truck tires out of them as he slowly started down.  Once the trailer got over the crest of the hill, it got off in the ruts and started pushing the truck.  Grimey was steering for all he was worth and then stood on the brakes, but the truck was no match for the 1000 gallons of sloshing water.  Within the blink of an eye the trailer passed the truck.  Unfortunately the truck was still attached so it sort of folded back along side of the trailer and the pair slapped together as they careened downhill.  The driver’s side of the truck was banging against the left side of the trailer and you could see Grimey still steering as they barreled down the hill, finally coming to a stop just shy of the bean field.

    After a few seconds, a shaken and stirred Grimey got out of the truck’s passenger side and surveyed the situation.  You can rest assured that he used all the dirty words he knew over the next five minutes or so and possibly made up a few in the process.  I don’t really remember the bosses’ response to the news about the truck, but I would doubt it was too bad.  They rarely got upset over stuff like that.  Besides, he was their son-in-law.  My friend, Roy, who was also their son-in-law, had done an excellent job at getting them accustomed to disaster.