The other side of the pond.

“Look, salamanders!”

These are the words that will forever be associated with one of the stupider things my brother and I did.

I can’t remember how old we were; I couldn’t drive, but my brother could – I’d say we were 14 and 18? I can’t remember what led us to leave the house that day, either. What I can say, is that when we passed the irrigation pond on a back road near the local farm, my brother decided that since the pond looked dry, we should “off-road” and check it out.

Let me stop for a minute and explain the vehicle we were in. It was a Nissan pickup truck; it had been used for years as a New York City plumbing truck by my uncle, before he sold it to his brother, my father. The bumpers on this thing made tanks look wimpy. The rest of the truck however, was, well, lower than basic. It was a two wheel drive, stick shift, which should have never left the pavement.

We went on our little adventure, checking out what the bottom of an irrigation pond looks like. The road – and by road I mean dirt trail – that we chose ended on one side of the pond; my brother wanted to be on the other side of the pond. Instead of driving back down the road and taking the other trail that led to this other side, he decided that this truck would be a good candidate for a real off-road experience, across the bottom of a still somewhat wet pond.

He gunned the truck, thinking speed was some type of magic force field that would transport him across the pond, and we started to skid and slide in every direction. When we reached the halfway point, I thought we just might make it. Then I realized that while the truck was making a lot of noise, it was not making a lot of ground.

We looked at each other, laughed a little, and he put it in reverse. We went about two feet before the same “noise, no movement” happened. Still laughing, but a little bit more worried now, we assessed the situation.

The truck had slowly buried itself up to its axles. We tried everything we could think of – we rocked it, put sticks under the tires, pushed it – nothing worked. At this point, I think we busted up laughing, because we knew we had to walk through the woods, and back to our house to get our father to help us, whom we were certain would not be happy about the situation.

As we approached the house, coming from the opposite direction than we’d left and with no truck, my father, who was working on a stone footpath in front of our house, saw us.

“Where’s the truck guys?” is what I believe he asked.

My brother answered with a “Well, funny thing about the truck Dad…”

After explaining to him what had happened, the three of us piled into the family minivan and drove to the farm to see if we couldn’t get that truck out. We brought rope, boards, and shovels – the works. After what seemed like hours, we were nowhere nearer to getting the truck out than when we started.

My brother, the one who was responsible for this whole mess, was in charge of gunning the engine and spinning the wheels, while my dad and I used brute strength to try and budge it at the same time. It was like a cartoon, where you see the car spin the mud to cover the other character head to toe. My father and I were filthy, dripping in mud, and it was getting dark. We struggled with boards and shovels in the narrow beam of brightness from the flashlight my brother was holding, when we found ourselves in complete darkness.

All we hear is my brother saying, “Look, salamanders!”

He was looking at friggin’ salamanders. I think it was at this time my father gave up, on the truck at least. He had already given up on us when we had walked back home with no truck.

My father and I looked at each other, dripping wet, covered in mud, standing at the bottom of a somewhat dried up pond and then at my brother, who was dry, clean, and looking at salamanders. We started to pack up our things, defeated.

My brother pleaded that we try a few more times.

“Come on, let’s hook up the minivan to the truck and pull it out.”

Thank god my dad was home that day to stop that train of thought, or we would have had one vehicle stuck in mud, with the fender of another one attached to it, like an anchor on the shore.

My brother wound up getting a tow truck the next day to pull him out, and since it was on private property, AAA wouldn’t cover it – which caused great pleasure for my dad and me.

After forking out the cash to recover a truck that rightfully belonged at the bottom of a pond, my brother learned an important lesson – when you’re clean as a whistle and two guys who are helping you are covered in mud, don’t go looking for salamanders.

Until next time…