Notes from "The Writer" in italics. All the rest of the story is absolutely true!
March 10, 2023
Dear Holly,
I really enjoyed your last letter. I’m so glad they were able to get Sam's wheelchair out of the snow and Sam is on the move again. It was nice of the neighbor to help.
We’ve been having a similar adventure. You remember I told you we (Billy and I) were getting to go with The Writer and her husband on their vacation trip with the trailer?
Well, Billy and I waited what seemed like forever by the front door with our suitcase and a bag of sports equipment—mostly different kinds of balls—we planned to use when we got to Arizona. We were looking forward to pretending to be real boys!
Finally The Writer let us go into the trailer, where we would ride when they drove. We put our things away. Then we waited a very long time. We knew we weren’t moving, because we could see out the window, and nothing was moving. Also we can feel when we’re being moved, even if we can’t see out.
After what seemed like hours, The Writer came into the trailer. She told us the lights on the back of the trailer weren’t working right, and her husband was fixing them.
You see, when you pull a trailer, the lights on your car or pickup (whatever you use to pull the trailer with) can’t be seen by other drivers, because the trailer is in the way. The lights are important, because that’s how the driver lets others know when they’re slowing down or getting ready to turn.
The trailer has its own lights, but they have to be turned on by the driver. To do that, the lights for the trailer have to be hooked up to the car or truck that’s pulling it. You have to check to make sure they work before you drive.
Finally, we were on the road. It was fun to sit on the bed in the trailer and look out the window. We could see trees and the tops of houses, and then just clouds in the sky. We knew then that we were out of town.
After a long time, we felt the motion of the trailer change. Billy said he thought we were slowing down. We looked out the window and saw some things we decided were gas pumps. We were getting gas in the pickup. (The trailer doesn’t need gas, because it doesn’t move on its own. It get pulled, like pulling a wagon.) Not the real gas station we used.
The Writer came into the trailer and told us we were going to stop for the night, because it was already late afternoon. The place where we stopped had something called "full hookups." That meant you can connect to power (electricity), water and sewer (SOO-wer), whatever that is. I think they need it for the bathroom and used water. The power worked right away, but no water came out of the faucet in the kitchen. The Writer said that there must be some ice in the pipes. They decided just to bring in some water from the campground faucet to use for washing and stuff. We would just be there overnight.
This was the view from the window as The Writer was fixing supper. Not a photo of where we actually stayed. First we pulled into a place like this, but none of the sites were cleared enough to pull in, so we found another place in Burns that looked nothing like this but had the snow removed from several sites.
The next day, they unplugged the power, and we rode off. All was going well until early afternoon. Suddenly, we heard a loud noise. It didn’t stop as we rode on. It was making my ears hurt. Billy had to cover his ears. I just took off my special glasses, and the sound was gone, but then I couldn’t see.
After a little while, I could tell we had stopped. I put my special glasses on again. Billy and I sat on the edge of the bed and looked out.
We were in the middle of nowhere. We decided that stopping where there was no gas station and no campground had something to do with that loud noise.
We talked about it and decided that the trip was not going well so far.
After a little while The Writer came and told us that we had a problem with the pickup truck. We couldn’t drive any farther until it was fixed. Someone was coming with a special kind of truck to take us to the next town, but it was a long way, so we would have to wait. Our human people kept talking about how cold it was and how strong the wind was. We got in bed with Dusty and stayed under the down comforter.
We decided to call home and tell the girls all about it. Mandy answered the phone. Jolena was there, too. We had a long chat. That helped pass the time.
It was dark when we said goodbye. As soon as we hung up from talking to the girls, we saw a flashing red light outside. It was a human person come to help. After the helper had talked with our humans, The Writer came and told us the man was going to put our pickup truck up on the bed of his truck, then attach our trailer to the back of his truck. He told them he would haul the pickup and tow the trailer. Using her phone, she found a picture online of the kind of truck he had. Not the actual truck. It was too dark to take useful photos, too cold to stand outside for long without gloves on and I didn't want to be in the way.
We tried to imagine our pickup on the bed of the big truck and our trailer following along behind. Then The Writer put us into a bag and took us (and Dusty) to the helper’s truck. She put us onto the back seat and then climbed in after us. (She said something about "just in case.") Billy tried to take photos, but most of them turned out like this.
There was one photo that turned out. He took it out of the back window of the helper’s truck. You can see the flashing lights and the front of our pickup on the bed of the helper’s truck.
After a long drive, the helper pulled into an RV campground and left the trailer in the spot the campground people had told The Writer to use. The Writer took us into the trailer, where we would wait while they took our pickup to the repair place.
The Writer and her husband still had to eat after they came back, so it was very late when we all got to sleep.
When we went outside the next day, this is what the place looked like.
The repair place can’t do anything with our pickup until after the weekend, so we will be here for a few days. We may not make it to Arizona, which is disappointing, and it may be hard to play ball here, because it’s so cold and windy, but I keep remembering something Jolena told us when we talked on the phone. She reminded us that we wanted to go on this trip so we could pretend to be real boys. She said that if we had been real boys on this trip we would not only be disappointed, but we would have been cold and hungry a lot of the time.
Now Billy and I are busy trying very hard to pretend to be cold and hungry as well as disappointed.
The nice lady in the office here says she can put this in the mail for me. It's a long walk, but The Writer said she would take me.
I’ll write again when we know how this is going to turn out.
All the best,
Emil
More has happened since then, but the story is long enough. Might as well save something for next week. 😅
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