Tuesday, April 17, 2012

LET'S HEAR IT FOR DA BOYS

It takes a massive set of...marbles, shall we say?...to drive a truck in the Hill Country. When you think of all these houses perched on the tops and sides of all these hills, and the crazy things they sometimes call "driveways" leading up to them, well, I guess it's something you have to experience for yourself.

A couple of weeks ago we noticed a lot of gravel trucks going past our house, and realized that someone must be clearing space for a house on one of those long-empty lots down the street from us. I guess they are pouring the foundation today for early this morning, as I sat waiting for the sun to come up, there were big cement trucks going back and forth. In fact, at one point, two of these massive trucks met each other coming and going, right in front of our house. Both stopped, and I found myself feeling really sad for whichever would lose this game of "chicken", and have to back up on this twisty road in total darkness, in order to let the other pass. But no one did. Instead, one of them began to inch forward. Did I mention that one side of the narrow road is a big ditch, while the other ends in a 10 or 15 foot drop straight down to the rocky creek bed below? And that it was pitch black out? Jeeze Louise, these drivers must have nerves of steel!

Of course, I knew that already. I've seen some, driving huge moving vans or delivering "pods", back up and down our own obstacle course as if it were nothing, even though more than one average-sized vehicle driven by a city dweller has ended up needing a tow. The one with the largest "assets" though, had to have been that guy from Tank Town. He delivered our ginormous rain tank -- the one in the picture above. You can read all about it here. He obviously knew it was a bit crazy to think he could pull that thing up the final steep gravel incline on a little trailer behind his pickup, whip it around that sharp curve, then, with only a small parking space to maneuver in, somehow straighten it up enough to back it onto it's pad. Did that stop him? No! He made the sign of the cross on his chest, gunned his motor, and went for it! Fortunately for all concerned, neither his truck nor our tank ended up rolling down the hill and into the creek. So, let's hear it for Hill Country truck-drivers. Be they male or female, they've got what it takes!

No comments: