Getting to Town

Sometime around1925. I, and two of my friends, Donald MacDonald, and John Conolly, all of us in our twenties, had taken jobs for the winter in the gold mines near Atlantic City and South Pass. Quitting our jobs with cattle and sheep to take jobs in the mines during the winter months was not an unusual thing to do, because the temperature stays pretty comfortable underground, even when the temperature at the surface is sub-zero.

One fine late fall day Donald suggested that John drive us to Lander in his Model T for some socializing. The problem was that the brakes were out on the car making it impossible to drive it down the mountain. But we weren't about to let a little thing like that stop us. It was Lander or bust.

Frontier ingenuity would have to come up with something that would work as brakes. The elevation dropped two thousand feet from Atlantic City to Lander, and the road had some very sharp curves, even switchbacks. We needed something to slow us down on the curves.. What we needed was a long log chain that we could loop around a big rock to use as a drag. Neither log chains or big rocks were scarce around the mine. The log chain in hand, we scanned the hillsides until we located a three hundred pound boulder with the right shape for binding with the chain. Then the three of us lifted the hitched rock onto the back of the old Tin Lizzy, chained it to the rear axle, and we were off. John figured low gear would be sufficient to slow the car down enough to make most of the curves; it was the switchbacks that had him worried.

We were in a good natured mood as we motored down the mountain, low gear slowing us down enough just enough to negotiate the steep hills and curves. Then came the switchbacks. Just before we got to them, Donald and I got into the back of the Model T and waited for a signal from John, who was driving. The motor whined as the compression built up in the engine. John was struggling to hold the car on the outside edge of the road. He wanted to make the turn as wide as he could. Just as he was about to make the turn he shouted,

"Now!"

Donald and I rolled the boulder out of the back of the car.

The idea was that when the big rock hit the road it would skid behind the car as the car dragged the heavy object. That would slow the car down enough to make the curve. But it didn't work that way. When the boulder hit the road it bounced several times behind the car, and when John turned the steering wheel to go around the curve, it bounced right off the downhill side of the road yanking the Model T off of the road with it.

Fortunately, the Model T didn't turn over when it went backward over the edge of the road. Nevertheless, it ended up in some aspens down the incline, and it took the three of us a couple of hours to push and pry the Model T back up to the road.

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