Rescue in the Fescue*

Across the creek and a field or two from our house is Harris Drive. Amy’s friend Carrie lives there with Loras and Ruth Neushwander, Paul’s great-aunt and uncle. Up the road from them is where Paul’s brother Steve lives with his family, and way back in behind their place is Paul’s Uncle James’s shop.

James is a calm, slow-spoken 60-something farmer.

Amy came home from the Emirates in March and decided she needs to get in shape, so almost every day she drives over to Loras and Ruth’s house to go on a walk with Carrie. They walk all the way to the end of Harris Drive and back.

On Friday they were on their way home when suddenly they thought they heard someone calling for help. They stopped and listened, and sure enough, there came a faint, faraway, "HEELLPP!!"

Carrie was the first to recognize that it came from James’s shop, and they took off running. As they arrived, this is what they saw:
Picture a tractor tire lying on the concrete, like a big donut. Now picture a big piece of metal, like a tin can with the ends out, set into the center of the tire/donut. A pair of feet stuck out from under the tire, and from inside the "tin can" a hand was waving a hat.

Amy still can’t quite piece together how this all happened, but it seems James had dual tires on the tractor and was trying to take the outside one off when it fell over on top of him and thoroughly pinned him down. So he was sitting in the middle with the tire pressing down on his legs. He had been there for an hour and a half.

Carrie grabbed a bar of some sort and used it as a lever to lift the tire, and James wiggled his way out. He was unhurt, thankfully, but was losing the feeling in his legs. He expressed his thanks as effusively as Uncle James expresses anything. The girls left, happy that they had been at the right place at the right time and that they heard him even though the wind was blowing the "wrong" direction. James, I am told, felt better after a soak in a hot bath and did not need medical attention.

Quotes of the Day:
"I just wish I would have had a camera along."
--Amy
"Well, I guess the first guy you rescued wasn’t your handsome prince."
--Emily

*Ok, so it wasn't exactly in the fescue, which is a type of grass, but I have thought for years that someday there ought to be a news headline like this from around here, as I mention, incidentally, in my new book, Ordinary Days, Family Life in a Farmhouse, which should be available in a month or so.