Hub # 30

Here on the hub pages there's a challenge that's called 30 hubs in 30 days. I decided to take this challenge to another level, and I wrote 30 hubs in just a little over 530 days. So what's the big deal? There's no accolade for writing 30 hubs. I don't see any real significance to this number other than it ends in a zero. I certainly don't feel any different now, that I have written 30 hubs. The only thing I can see is I now have an excuse to tell a true story which happened to me years ago along Interstate 30.

Many years ago my long journey on interstate 30 started off very early in the morning while moving to a new house some distance away, along with the help of my wife's uncle Barry and my friend Joe. We used Barry's truck, which he just had finished completing a lot bodywork on. It was all primed up, and the only thing left that it was waiting on was a coat of paint. Barry didn't trust anyone else to drive his truck, which is why he came along on the trip. We made it to our destination which was about 200 miles away, and unloaded our cargo of furniture without a single problem. We stopped to gas up at a little store and armed with a six pack of beer we began the late trip back. This story doesn't really get interesting until around 3am in the morning, where we were on a desolate stretch of interstate 30 about fifty miles outside of Texarkana.

Everything was nice and quiet for everyone up to that point, when all of a sudden Barry yells out Look! That startled both myself and Joe, and we awoke to see Barry pointing out the window towards the direction in next lane of the interstate 30. After rubbing the sleep out of both of our eyes, We saw what Barry was pointing at, and we could hardly believe what they were seeing. There was an empty trailer passing by us in the left hand lane of interstate 30. Luckily at this time of day there wasn't any other traffic on interstate 30, so we had the entire roadway to ourselves. The trailer's safety chains were dragging on the road creating bright yellow sparks that looked almost like fourth of July fireworks. As it silently past us in the early morning hours, I yelled look at that, and Joe said wait a minute that's our trailer. All three of us then looked back to see that our trailer was gone from the back of the truck.

Joe told Barry to slow down and just let the empty trailer run off of the road, and then we will Just simply stop and pick it up. Sounded like a great idea at the time, however if ever something can go wrong, it will, and it most certainly did. Now the trailer had gone up the road about three car lengths ahead of us, so Barry started to slow down and wait for it to get off the roadway. However this is where the good intended plan all of a sudden went bad. When Barry slowed down, so did the empty trailer. When Barry moved over into the far right lane of interstate 30, so did the empty trailer. It seems that the drag from the Pick-up truck was sucking the trailer towards us, and no matter what move Barry made the empty trailer would follow us.

Joe yelled slow down and get away from it, and Barry yelled back that's what I'm trying to do you idiot. There was a lot of yelling going on at this point, when all of a sudden the empty trailer rammed the side of the truck. Barry now moved over into the the emergency lane, only to have the trailer slam into the truck again. The empty trailer now started to ram the side of the truck over and over from the front fender all the way down the side of the pick-up truck to the rear quarter panel. This continued until finally somehow the trailer's tire got wedged in between the truck's rear tire and fender, which brought everything to a screeching halt on the side of interstate 30. When the smoke and the dust finally cleared, all three of us got out of the truck to access the damage.

The entire side of the truck was totally banged up, to put it lightly. Now the three of us are on the side of interstate 30 at three o'clock in the morning, in the pitch dark. The root cause of this big fiasco was the large nut on the trailer hitch ball, became loose and fell off. The trailer hitch ball was still in the tongue of the trailer, however the nut was long lost miles back on interstate 30. The trailer tire was actually completely stuck and wedged in between the truck fender and truck tire. So we let enough air out of the tires to separate the trailer from the truck. After that was done there was no looking for the missing nut, and my wife's uncle just wanted to push the trailer over the side of the road. We went through the toolbox in the back of the truck and found a pair of vice grips, and they held for the last 50 miles of the trip.

We finally made it back home safely with the trailer in perfect shape, and it only had one very little scratch. However the truck had to have extensive body work started all over again on it. This really is a true story, and it really did happen down here one hot summer night on interstate 30. That was over twenty five years ago, and still today if someone brings this story up to my wife's uncle, he gets very mad about it, but everyone else is still laughing, which is why I wanted to share it with you all.