Episode #9: "Everything we own is stuck there in the pasture"

 Like many folks I know we lived in a mobile home for a lot of years. We started in 1985 when we were renting a very nice 3 bedroom 2 bath brick home in a very nice part of town. The landlord was my father in law's boss, so we got a really favorable rental rate. He got into some financial problems and lost all of his rental properties and other assets throughout town. The bank took all of his residential rentals and sold them. As the current renter, we had the first right of refusal but simply could not afford the house payment, taxes and insurance on the $8.25 hourly rate I was making at the time. There were not that many rental options in town and they were mostly the rate we were currently paying or more for a dump I would not want my dog living in, Plus at the time we had a 2 year old and a 5 year old so we needed a decent place to live. 

We checked all of our options and the best thing we could come up with was buying a new single wide mobile home. The payment was about the same and we qualified for some assistance that included an option of no payments for 6 months. We had to borrow the down payment money from a relative but was able to pay that back in the next 6 months of no house payments. So that is how we started our life as 'trailer trash' as some people were called.

We lived in a mobile home park in Gainesville for the next 4 years, then we bought 2 acres about 10 miles out of town in Woodbine. We lived there and developed that property for 4 years. I did not plan on moving that mobile home again so I cut the hitch tongue off the frame so we could enclose the end with skirting and make it look better. 

We lived there for the next 4 years until my folks bought 11 acres just west of Whitesboro with a mobile on it in which they lived. I sold the 2 acres we had there in Woodbine and welded the tongue back on the trailer frame and had it hauled from there to the property my folks owned. 

It is now May of 1993 and the spring rain was still upon us. We caught a span of several days without rain, and the forecast was for many days of rain coming so we took a chance to get the trailer moved. The truck easily got the home off the property that it sat for 4 years and headed to the highway then to county road 107. I had the power pole there and had trenched and laid the water line and ready for the home to be set and leveled.

We thought and hoped we could pull it through the pasture to the site I had leveled and prepped over the previous few weeks and get this done before the rain that was forecasted later that evening. The truck driver got off the county road and about 75' into the pasture and suddenly both drive tandems on the truck were spinning and were sinking before the driver realized he was so stuck. The only thing we had was my dad's old 601 Ford tractor so we hooked a chain on the back of it and tried to pull the truck in hopes of getting it out of the ruts that were dug in the pasture. That was a complete waste of time. All we did was nearly get the tractor stuck!                                                                                                        

We were still about 100' from where the house was to be set. We decided a wrecker would not be the solution as it would have to move at least twice due to the distance we had to go. This plus the wrecker would likely get stuck as well when it start winching it made it not a solution. My heart sank and I walked over to my folks house about 250' away to talk to Carol to give her all the bad news I just found out about. That is when she said "everything we own is stuck there in the pasture". 

My options were not very good and I could think of only 1 thing to do so I did it. I was working for a concrete company that had a plant about 6-7 miles east. That batch plant had a wore out old Terex rubber tire front end loader that was used to load this little batch plant with sand and stone. I did not know if it would work, but I did know was it had very big tires, it was all wheel drive and it was the only thing I could think of at the moment. I drove my truck to the plant and drove the loader on the shoulder of the highway all the way to my predicament which took quite a bit of time and the day was starting to get away from me with storms on the way.

When I finally got back I drove it out across the pasture and hooked a chain from the back of the loader to the front of the truck. The driver told me not to stop until we get to the site where it is to be set. I took off in low gear not knowing how much weight I was pulling as the home was fully loaded with all of our possessions. I took the slack out of the chain and put a load on the machine and it rolled right away and much easier than I thought it might. about 10' from where we started, the loader strained, the engine labored and a puff of black smoke came out of the exhaust pipe but it kept rolling. In just a few minutes we were at the setting location. I got off the loader and unhooked the chains. The truck driver came over to me to say he was glad I didn't stop. He said the trailer sunk to the frame rails and was being dragged like a skid which was what burdened the loader.     

                                           

The truck driver spotted the house a few feet from where I stopped pulling him and he leveled and tied down the house while I drove the loader back to the plant and then got back as soon as I could. I paid him and he was on his way. I connected the electric power supply to the service disconnect at the meter base and we had power to the house. By this time it was almost dark. As forecasted, the rain hit like the flood of Noah and rained all night and all the next day. I hooked up the water line to the house and the sewer lines to the septic tank line in the mud and rain the next day, but at least our house was not out in the pasture stuck and sunk to the frame. After this rain it would have been at least a couple of weeks or more before we could even think about getting another truck out there. 

I was very proud of that ugly old, green and rickety Terex that was on it's last duty service at this small satellite batch plant. It really saved my bacon that day! 

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