An Old Debt

Hello friends.

Its Sunday, July 16, 2017. I’m writing this while sitting in the shade in our fabulous, USFS camp site on the Tobacco River in the Kootenai National Forest just northwest of Eureka, Mt, about fifty miles from the Canadian border.

Whitetail and mule deer, golden and bald eagles, osprey, northern rough-winged swallows, bank swallows, great blue herons, spotted sandpipers, rufous hummingbirds, common loons and more. We have been camped here for three days, watching birds and a few locals come and go, fishing, kayaking and hanging out.  A few Montana rednecks and evangelicals lurking about, looking for unsaved souls, not the rednecks. Not sure what they were looking for.  Since we have been in this area we have been prayed for and questioned as to our acceptance of Jesus Christ as out personal Lord and Savior. More on that phenomena later.

This spot is smack dab on the twelve hundred Pacific Northwest Trail, not to be confused with the Pacific Crest Trail. We have watched twenty or more hikers go by. One guy’s pack weighed fifty pounds. A young man just went by carrying twenty pounds which included five days food. Lots of ways to get that journey done. Not one of these folks have asked us about our commitment to Jesus Christ. They are on their own enlightenment journey not the evangelical kind. Just now a bald eagle flew by, being vigorously harassed by an osprey. Tomorrow we are headed into Canada.

Now for the story.

This past Friday we were in Hulett, Mt for breakfast. I was backing Flicka II into a tight space and, ever so slightly and gently, turned just a little too tightly and, as a consequence, jackknifed. I heard a little snap, just a little one, one that should have been a warning, but being a college educated man and prone to considering “higher” matters than the sound of tearing steel, I ignored it. What could possibly go wrong. I probably imagined the sound anyway.  

So down the road we went on our way to Broadus, Mt. passing through more scorched and dusty land, through Hammond, Boyes and finally into Broadus, all towns with less than five hundred souls aboard. We are beginning to get into butte country and they are named. East Fork Butte, Morellas Butte, Fighting Butte, Preston Butte.

Our primary objective for being here was to get water, not an easy task in this country. We found out that the local library was the place. The librarians were very nice and gave us a key to the faucet. That’s right, a key to the faucet. While I was attending to that Emily wondered around checking on things. She called out to me that there was something I should look at on the trailer. Which I did and it wasn’t pretty.

My ever so observant captain had discovered that a weld holding the anti-sway bar on to the hitch had parted. An anti-sway bar is not a critical piece of equipment but it does stabilize a trailer and reduce swaying. Hint, that’s why they call it an anti-sway bar. It helps one maintain control if a trailer tire blows out.

So, there we sat. I remained silent for a few moments, painfully remembering yesterday’s snapping sound which was getting louder by the moment, the one I had decided to imagine yesterday. I chose not to tell Emily about yesterday’s jack knifing event. No sense in confirming suspicions she may already have about a certain traveling companion.

It was 1530 on a Friday afternoon in this hot, sleepy, dusty agricultural town. Probably not the best time to find a welder, which is what we needed, after I had come to the painful conclusion that this thing needed fixing. A guy at a Conoco station told where we could find the only welder in town so away we went to Chance Lambert’s shop.

As luck would have it he was not there. But right next door was Lil’s café. Lil’s café looks like the kind of place that Tom Waites would hang out in if he was a poet, musician cowboy looking for material. Plain, quaint and earthy. “Cash only, that means you.” But the waitresses could not have been nicer and Betsy Sue, after hearing our dilemma, pulled her cell phone out and called Mr. Lambert. She got him on the line and after a little chit chat gave me the phone and our adventure with Chance began.

He was in town and supposed that he could help but that I should know that he had a “little” drink. After a guffaw or two by me, I asked him whether it was one drink or five drinks. He said he was starting on his second. I said well I hate to put a damper on the start of your weekend but two drinks don’t sound like a whole lot for a welder. “What could go wrong?”, I asked. “Maybe plenty”, he replied. That got another guffaw from me.

For me the actual task at hand, getting the weld fixed, somehow became less important than meeting Chance Lambert. He hesitated briefly and said, “Well, I’ll just finish this one and come along in a few minutes”.

Sure enough, pretty soon he shows up. I was expecting a grizzled old guy in his sixties with a three-day beard, bloodshot eyes and tobacco stains on his chin, but Chance turned out to be a handsome, clear eyed, beanpole of a man in his late twenties, with catcher mitt hands and an easy-going gait. Slow talker with not much to say at first, but he hadn’t run into the likes of me before, probably had never met a Virginian. Probably not prepared for questions, questions, questions. As it turned out he had only been east one time and that was to Alabama to visit a friend who he had gone to welding school with him.

He looks at the broken weld, disassembles the parts, studies them for a while and goes to work, with me following him around. I started by asking about irrigation in this country. He was very happy to tell me about that and as it turned out he had a pretty commanding knowledge of local hydrology. He spoke about the artesian wells along the river that delivered fifty gallons of water a minute and the shallow dug wells that dotting the prairie that delivered much less. He said if you don’t irrigate here you don’t grow anything.

He went on to talk about growing up on his family’s seven-thousand-acre ranch which he explained was quite small for this country. He said they could support the about three hundred and fifty cattle on it. A more typical ranch in this country is tens of thousands of acres.

After more questions from me he talked about going to college to study welding, his business and driving big trucks on the side. We were having a collegial and happy conversation. Chance was an easy-going slow- walking, slow-talking guy and he clearly knew what he was doing. While we talked he worked methodically, grinding, cleaning and finally welding. Emily asked him about wearing a welding helmet, which he was not at the time. He got all three of his helmets out and explained how each one was different and what they were used for.

The work went well and I got a sense that it was being done professionally and with great care. He primed and painted the finished product which gave us more time for pleasant talk. After an hour and a half or so we were pretty much ready to go on our way. I asked him what we owed him, fully expecting a sizable tab what with it being after hours for him so to speak and certainly a premium figured in since we had interrupted his drinking. He looks away uncomfortably I thought then back and said, “I suspect if you have a twenty in your pocket that will do.” I said, “No I don’t have a twenty, but I have a fifty, and that’s what I’m giving you.” He said, Oh, that’s way too much. There wasn’t much welding to that job.” “Well, a fifty is what you are going to get”, I replied. Back in Virginia if we could’ve even found somebody on such short notice to do a job like this it would’ve cost a lot more.

Then I told Chance a story a story and I’m going to tell it to you now. It goes to part of the reason I gave Chance a fifty. Call it repaying an old debt.

In the mid-seventies, my life-long friend Steve Moore and I were traveling out West. We were driving my 1967 Volkswagen camper van. We had great adventures and one of them took place outside Grand Junction, Colorado. About ten miles to the east, the van engine suddenly quit.  Turns out a pulley had sheared off. On engines pulleys support belts that transfer power to engine parts. No pulley, no go. So, there we sat. Pulled off the road and watched traffic stream by. These were the days of no cell phones, no internet.  But I did have a thumb. I stuck it out and hitchhiked into Grand Junction with my broken pulley. Steve guarded the fort while I was gone. It was about a ten-mile trip to town. By the end of our travails that day he was able to read almost a whole book.

In Grand Junction, there was a Volkswagen dealer but they did not stock the pulley we needed. Go figure. The dealer advised me to go to a certain junkyard and see what they might have. Back then junkyards were not quite as sophisticated as today. Then, one wandered around to find a matching wreck. You find the part you need, pull it off the wreck and pay on the way out. Good idea except I didn’t have any tools. At least not with me. They were back at the fort. Which is where I hitchhiked to next. All the way back to the van. After securing the tools I reversed course and made my way back to the Grand Junction junkyard. Lucky for me people driving by were quite accommodating.

Back at the junkyard things didn’t go so well. No matching pulleys. The junkyard guys told be about a guy on the east end of town who ran a welding shop. Lucky for me. That’s on my way back to the van. So, I went hitchhiking again. Stuck that well practiced thumb out just when a Grand Junction cop rode by and, using a bull horn, politely informed me, an obvious tinhorn, that hitchhiking was illegal in Grand Junction and would net me a one-way jail ticket if I persisted. By this time, I was hot and dry and pretty exasperated but dutifully I walked eastward until I got to the city limits where the thumb went back out.

I made my way to the welder whose name, if I ever knew it, is forever gone to me. He was an older guy and living by himself in a shop with machines, iron, sculptures, trailers, pipe, railroad cars, broken down trucks all over the place, a lifetime’s work of fixing, building and creating big machines, little machines, you name it he had probably welded it. He was a delightful man, easy talk. I showed him the broken pulley.

Did I mention that he was in a wheelchair? He pushed himself around picking up various tools, mounted the pulley on a clamp and began to piece it together, all the while checking for proper alignment, important for a rapidly rotating engine component. He was careful, methodical and clearly enjoyed what he was doing. And he was good at talking and he did most of it. Two things that come to mind were that he had recently lost his wife which he was very sad about and that he was a veteran and that he was very proud to have served his country. I told him a little bit about myself and about the adventures that my friend Steve and I were having. He enjoyed that said that he was from Grand Junction, had always been a homebody and admired people who ventured out to see the world. He finished the weld, ground it down, polished it up and took great pains to examine it to make sure it was true. He handed it to me and said, “that ought to do it.” I said, “how much do I owe you?’ He smiled and said, “nothing”.

I was shocked it was very hard to believe that this guy would not take a nickel but he insisted. We said goodbye and parted ways. I thought we had parted ways anyway. When I went away with my just like new pulley whistling a tune and feeling pretty darn good. By golly we were about to get on our way. I arrived back and told Steve of our good fortune and my encounter with this fabulous guy. I took the pulley to the back of the van where that fine German-made engine set ready to be fired up and that’s when I realized that I had left my tools with the welder.

One cannot imagine the pain that I was in at that moment, a turning point in my life. But I pulled myself together and plodded on.  Faced with adversity one must rise to the occasion.

To Grand Junction I go, hitchhiking my way back once again. I guess the good news of the story is that plenty of people picked me up. My new welder friend and I had a good laugh about my travails. He said he knew I would be back and he wasn’t going anywhere. So, we visited for a few moments and I thanked him again and again and away I went. One more trip back. I was able to install the pulley, replace the belt, fired that engine up and away we went. And all it cost me was a whole lot of hitchhiking. A Steve got to read a book.

So that’s why I gave Chance Lambert fifty bucks. An old debt repaid.

Back at Chance’s shop I shook his catch mitt hand and away we went. After taking our leave of Chance and Broadus, MT. we headed west toward Ashland, MT, left the main road, traveled for twelve miles on a hard packed sandy, gravel road to camp on the East Fork of the Otter River. We were in the Custer National Forest in a remote campground with the usual USFS, very clean, vault toilet. There was one other couple there in a recreational vehicle, the Montana state flower. They cheerfully waved greetings. Otherwise we were alone in this beautiful, hot, dry place. We stayed there for two days.

Thank you for reading this story. It’s not that exciting but it’s true.

My next entry will be a catch-up and I’ll tell you about more the days on the road and our adventures.

Good night and good luck.