Hung up on a rock? Just wave your hands
Simple things can be so complicated if you’re an oaf like me. I don’t back up a car with skill. Just ask my wife. She trembles when I try to back into a parking place. No wonder, then, that I got hung up on a flat rock at the edge of a driveway.
The finale, or purpose of this tale, is to tell the goodness of Quad-City people. The people, not the rock, are wonderful.
It was a slushy day last week. I drove into the drive of a friend, paying no attention whatsoever that it was flanked by a big flat stone from the dinosaur age. I cut my visit brief, being on the way to a doctor’s appointment. I backed up and went nowhere. The big flat stone had been partially covered with snow. I was hung up on that stone. My front wheels spun like mad.
Rushing back to the house, I pleaded: “Call this number and tell my doctor I will be late, if at all.” It was an important appointment and my throat began to dry. Minor panic, you know.
I rushed out into 4th Street in Bettendorf, waving my arms. Instantly, a young man stopped.
“Can you help me get off this rock,” I pleaded. The afternoon was chill; he was dressed in only a T-shirt. He pushed and lugged. The front wheels were spinning like wild.
“If we had a plank or hunk of wood, maybe I could pry you off the rock,” he said.
My friend came out of the house with a long, shining slab of oak. It was a closet shelf from her remodeled home.
“No, no, no,” I can’t wreck that piece of wood,” I said.
The young man shrugged, said I was impossibly hung up.
BACK INTO THE STREET I dashed, waving my arms again, this time at a man driving a pickup truck. I frantically told him it was an emergency, that I had to get to the doctor in five minutes.
“OK, brother,” he shouted, circling backward into the alley. He hooked a tow line to his truck and under my little car. The young man suggested to me, “You stay here. I’ll get behind your wheel.” (Wise suggestion.) The man with the pickup hopped back to his seat and revved his pickup. The cable tightened, grunted. In seconds, my car was off that accursed rock.
“Thank you, bless you,” I waved out my open window, hurrying to my doctor’s appointment, only 10 minutes late. I didn’t even get the names of the guys who got me off that rock.
The plastic surgeon carried out his procedure. I told him of the stuck-on-the rock incident. He warned that I may have ripped a hole in the oil pan of my small car. The next morning he called me at home, asking if everything was going all right . He was concerned about the surgery. He also was concerned if I had ripped the oil pan. I guess I hadn’t, nothing is dripping.
All this on a sunny afternoon, with thanks in this space to the two anonymous guys who got me off the rock, to the woman who was willing to give up her closet shelf as a wedge, and to the doctor.
What did you do last Friday afternoon?
The politest way to say, ‘Turn off your cell’
Before Sunday afternoon’s Quad-City Symphony concert at Augustana’s Centennial Hall, emcee Kai Swanson subtly said to the crowd:
“If Tristan and Isolde and Romeo and Juliet could conduct their epic romances without a cell phone, I think that you could get by for an hour or two.”
SOMETHING has to be done about the lack of Centennial Hall parking. Never mind the afternoon’s lake-size puddles, but some concertgoers, I swear, had to park all the way in Moline.
Bill Wundram can be contacted at (563) 383-2249 or bwundram@qctimes.com.