This morning Gina fixed us a nice breakfast, including those yummy fresh orange rolls, and I spread up the bed and packed my bag into the car. Called Joe to see how the weather was at home and he said it had quit blowing about 30 minutes ago. He asked me to call again about the time I got to the East Fork Bridge and he'd be watching for me. At Ridley's (ex-Falers) stopped for some groceries, and started on home. Sunny and clear, but the wind was still blowing a ground blizzard across the road in town and most of the way home. There wasn't a white out, so fairly good driving. By the time I got to the big "S" curves there was more snow that had stayed on the road and it was very white, perhaps could have been quite icy. Called Joe again. Got to our turnoff and was concentrating on how big or whether there were drifts that would be very deep. Had gotten the mail yesterday so didn't stop at the mailbox. I just kept driving on into the house. There were drifts, but none very deep.
As I was putting the groceries away, Joe asked if I'd seen his truck. I guess he looked out there when he was putting my car away and couldn't see it. I just was astounded as I realized I really didn't notice it sitting out there by the mailbox. I came in and looked with the spotting scope, but there's a very large pile of snow and couldn't tell if the truck might be hidden behind it. I could not see it.
So Joe said he'd go out there and look and took the dogs with him in the car. Gradually I got all the stuff put away, started unpacking my bags, and doing other things. He was gone a long time and I wondered if he had gotten stuck or drove into the ditch. And me with no way to go look, I just waited.
Well, guess what! Someone had stolen the truck. He finally came back and since there was fresh snow he could see where his truck had made a u-turn out of its parking spot and headed toward the river. He drove down to Mack Flat and there was his truck sitting in the middle of the road with the engine running. Someone had broken out the back window, tried to hack into the driver side door, pried out the ignition with the tire iron, and hot wired it to get it started. They had gone through everything and thrown it all over the cab, but didn't take anything he knew of. Well as usual those rules we know don't apply to him and he moved the truck to the side of the road, probably messed up some of the evidence. He was trying to bring it home but the engine stalled. Joe said he tried to hot wire it, but couldn't make it work. It still had 3/4 of a tank of gas even after running for as long as maybe 8 or 9 hours.
We called 9-1-1 and he met the deputies down there. They came pretty quickly - by now it was after 11 a.m. The gist of the story is that someone had called 9-1-1 about midnight and they were stuck. No one would go to get them out because the wind was blowing and it was storming so bad. The had driven off the road into the deep snow. They think maybe about 3 a.m. is when they took Joe's truck and drove it down their to pull their vehicle out with. This hot wiring thing is not easy to do according to the deputies - apparently on the newer vehicles - but I thought every teenager knew how to do that. Then they just left it there running. I think the deputy said that they called the sheriffs dept. to say they had gotten out.
By now there were three sheriff trucks and three deputies, including a detective. They pieced the trail of clues together and figured the same truck ran off the road and into Nick's fence down around the corner past the intersection, and on out the Muddy Speedway. There were beer bottles everywhere along the way. In the meantime I called the insurance agent, but couldn't get her and no 800 number to call. Joe and the deputies were back and forth between here and the truck several times.
They got the dispatch to send out a tow truck which quickly came and took Joe's truck into Troy's in town where they would fix it there except for the paint job which would be done somewhere else. By this time it was 5 p.m. So hopefully our insurance agent will call us in the morning and we will give them the report number and our insurance will pay for the damage. I guess it could be worse. They said it will take about two weeks. And now my car will have to sit out on the road in case we get another storm bad enough to get it snowed in here. I am to the point that I was resigned to having to snow machine anyway. This is so discouraging, and one more thing in that list of bad stuff that keeps happening lately.
