The Alexander City Outlook

Towing tales, toils and trouble

There is a line in the somewhat recent film “Pineapple Express” where one character yells out to a villain, “You were just killed by a Daewoo Lanos,” and every time I hear this I laugh because it hits just a little too close to home.

Let me start to explain with one line. Men sometimes do stupid things because they are foolhardy and believe they are stronger in their minds than in actuality. Unfortunately I am one of these men.

It was about five years ago and I was driving home from college for the weekend. I was behind the wheel of the small green vehicle I drove prior to my current ride – a Daewoo Lanos – which coincidently earned me the nickname of Daewoo Dale on my intramural bowling team at the University of Alabama.

I was literally within walking distance of my parents’ driveway in Loxley when that vehicle, which was small enough to fit in my back pocket, decided to quit on me. I was fortunate to catch the hill near my place just right and coasted down to the front of my driveway.

I unbuckled my safety belt and trudged up the steep driveway in anger toward my house. I managed to complain enough to my parents that night that we went car shopping that Saturday.

After resting a day or so with new car smell fresh on my nostrils, it was time to leave, but not before doing one final chore – moving the green monstrosity away from the state highway and placing it safely in my parents’ driveway. That’s where the problem first began.

My father and I decided to go to Home Depot to get the necessary supplies for the job. Because of the small size of the Daewoo we decided to buy heavy-duty rope instead of chain to tow the disabled car behind my father’s truck. This was our first mistake.

Our second mistake was more my mistake. As the car was slowly being towed up our driveway, I decided to hit the brakes, which broke the rope and set up a disastrous third mistake.

There we were with a small car halfway up a steep hill and no means of conveyance. At this point the best solution would have been to use a good piece of rope or chain and re-attach the car to the truck in order to start again. I would have none of that.

In my mind it seemed perfectly logical for two men to push a car weighing thousands of pounds up an incline. It wasn’t long before we realized that wasn’t the best solution.

Two seconds into our ill-fated feat, the car was rolling backward. As I jumped in the front seat to stop the car, my foot got caught underneath the brake pedal and I fell. The vehicle, in some last ditch effort of revenge for replacing it, dragged me down the driveway toward a busy state highway and certain death. There was not much going through my head at that point. It was a mixture of shock and belief that I had to be the dumbest, most clumsy person alive. I was certain that survival of the fittest was going to take its toll on another weak mind at that time.

I could hear the oncoming traffic approaching as my father, who looked like an overwhelmed juggler, finally was able to stop the car inches from the roadway. I walked away from the experience with a few stitches and a damaged ego.

I can still remember the conversation with my mother that night. It ended with a soft sigh and “idiots,” was all she said.