Kris: The car disappears in sand

At the end of this story, the front end of my car is stuck in sand up to its bumper, in the middle of a dry riverbed, on a hot day (Monday), in dry, scraggly, pinon-covered countryside, some twenty miles north of Santa Fe. In the car with me are my three year old, the baby, and my cousin.

As the car came to a complete stop, my cousin said "don't stop now!" (she's right, I had let up on the gas a little, and that just sank the car in), my three year old started repeating “what’s happening?”, and the baby started screaming, on principal. And then my cousin – tall, thin, lives in Europe, wears designer clothes, weighs approx. 102 pounds – jumps out of the car to push. In low-heeled flip flops, adorable tour-Santa Fe peasant skirt, and tank top.

But first she calmly tells Little Big Girl what was happening, and that we are in a bit of a crisis. At which point Little Big Girl switches her mantra to “can you knit me my purse now? Can you knit me my purse now?” After all, the car *is* stopped.

I realize this is not the end of the story. Because at the very end of the story, we get the car out of the sand with the help of an entire slew of locals who happen to drive by... Mainly, by the man in the truck that pulls our car out, who I never did meet. He is helped by the (handsome, Hispanic) man in the Jeep, who stays around to loan his chain to the guy in the truck, who is also helped by an (older, weathered) Native American man who helps the Jeep Guy lift the front end of the station wagon out of the sand, so that the truck guy can actually pull our car out of the quagmire it is in.

This is after, of course, the guy in the Jeep tries to pull our car out. He attaches this huge chain to the back of our car (who put this metal loop thing – I’m sure it has a real name – under our car? Did they know I was going to buy it?) All I know is, I hear terrible popping noises, I look in the rear view mirror and the Jeep is reared up on its hind tires like a bucking stallion and I think, that thing is going to flip right over backwards. Onto us. Our car, in the meantime, does not budge. An iota. Like nothing at all is flipping around behind it, attached to it, and trying to pull it somewhere.

When I called out “Stop! Please stop!”, my cousin said to me “Have you ever towed something?” Uh, no. In addition to speaking four languages, she also used to live in Colorado and drive a Jeep. “This is normal,” she assures me.

And all this was after the girl in a tiny car drove by and offered to drive all four of us somewhere. And after a second girl in an equally tiny car drove by, disgorged four incredibly large men, who altogether, along with the older Native American man, tried to push our car out.

And this after the older Native American man alone tried to push our car. And then the Native American man with the help of my cousin. And then before that, just my cousin alone, in the flip flops. Suffice it to say, none of the actual human pushing was noted in any way by my incredibly stubborn car, or the approximately two tons of sand which had sucked in its tires, and possibly its axle. I don’t know much about sand (obviously), but I do know that those little 50 pound bags of playsand are heavy and we had a hell of a lot more than a few of those surrounding the car.

In the meantime, I’m on the phone trying to call Amoco Motor Club. I am incredibly grateful to the girl, and the girl, and the Indian guy, and the four large men – and to be honest, we didn’t really know that anybody was going to drive by let alone a guy with a chain and another with a truck to actually help us. I was a little skeptical of those initial efforts, I did have two small children in the car, it was hot, and sandy, the baby was crying, and I figured the sooner I got on an actual tow-truck’s waiting list, the better.

Of course, the calling wasn’t going so well. First the baby had scattered all the cards from my wallet around the house the day before, and of course the Amoco Club card is the one I didn’t find, so I don’t actually have their number. And of course, the 800-Info number doesn’t seem to work here in the sticks. And the 411 number, with it’s automated system, cannot understand my female voice, per usual, plus it keeps picking up the baby’s screaming in the background, and so it keeps saying in its insanely calm voice, “Sorry, I didn’t get that.”

In the other meantime, I am constantly hanging up in order to drive, or put it in neutral and pretend to steer, or whatever needs to happen with each of our would-be rescuers. When I finally get the number (by calling my husband at work and saying “I really can’t explain right now, but can you look up the Amoco number we’re stuck in an arroyo and a guy in a jeep pulled up, I gotta go”) I get the Amoco rep in India, who is having a very hard time understanding the concept of an arroyo and an even worse time understanding where we are in northern New Mexico, because even I didn't know that (our Native American friend gave me our location as "the arroyo in the Tesuque River by KC's" "who is KC?" I ask, and he grins and pats his chest) when, thank God, the guy in the truck pulled up. At least that time I didn’t think I had better odds on the phone than in the craziness going on around me when I hung up.

My three year old, meanwhile, keeps asking my cousin for that darn purse to be knit. At another point she is again asking me something - we had some lull times between rescuers and I was again on the phone - and I didn't even hear her. Finally my cousin answers her question, and tells her "mom's a little busy right now." "Oh yeah" says Little Big Girl, "she's in a crisis."

And at the very beginning of the story, this is what I learned. First, do not trust Mapquest to give you directions to random small Spanish towns in northern New Mexico. The computer, which has never driven through these parts, will pick what looks like the most expedient route, on small random county roads, rather than the less direct but actually passable highways and roads built after 1957. Second, when the small county road you are on – yes, in landscape that is beautiful and rolling and dotted with pinons but really in the middle of BFN – suddenly dips down and disappears under fifty yards of silty dry sand two feet deep, because the road crosses an arroyo (a usually-dry river bed) - even though other cars have passed and packed down parts of it - just take those little babies and your lovely cousin and go back to the damn highway. Even if you think your crazy Mother, and Aunts, and Cousins who are on vacation and you are trying to meet up with in the quaint lovely Spanish town already came this way. They didn't.

And a couple of the lessons that I learned at the end:

- that when you give your husband such brief information about a sketchy situation, you really ought to call him back and update him. ("okay, tell me again why you were four-wheeling in an arroyo, on a hot day, with our kids in the car, in a station wagon?")

- that there are a heck of a lot of nice people in northern New Mexico.

- and that it probably doesn’t hurt to have your hottie cousin in a short skirt out pushing the car first in order to have them all come running.

And now nap time is officially over, kids need attention, and you will have to just put this story in order by yourself.


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Comments:
Due to Blogger limitations, I stopped Comments for this post and am instead pasting the existing ones here. New Comments, if any, can be emailed to cribceiling at yahoo.com and will be added here. : ) :

BoulderLynne:
OMG, now that I can breath again, and am down to wiping the tears from my eyes, that was so darned funny, and so darned Krisco! Put it in the girls baby books, at least Little Big Girl's.

Lisa says:
Funny. I'm just incredibly grateful that there are an awful lot of nice people in NM. Love, Lisa