The Last Towing

As we came over the top of that hill, we both knew we were goners.

In hindsight, the decision to tow my brother Kirby’s ’73 Power-Wagon – baby blue and affectionately known as the Ice Cream Truck – may have been a poor one. It wasn’t so much the decision itself that was wrong – after all, he was in trouble and I, as his brother, was there to help – but rather it was the method we used to accomplish the towing which was to blame.

Whatever the cause, within a few miles of our leaving the storage yard in Denver, with the last bit of daylight fading over the mountains behind us and the back of the Ice Cream Truck piled high with all that Kirby owned – pots and pans, his favorite Lazyboy, a queen mattress, boxes of books, tool chests, clothing, and a few of our Dad’s paintings – that bad things started to happen.

His truck was firmly bolted to the rear-bumper of my ’83 Dodge Ramcharger via a steel A-frame contraption known as a tow-bar. When I’d picked it up two days earlier from the rental place back in Eden Prairie, just a few miles from my home, the guy behind the counter had shaken his head like I was some sort of fool. “You sure you don’t want to trailer that truck?”

But we knew better, Kirby and I; by that stage of our lives, we were experts on towing. What was the big deal? We’d towed with far worse equipment: dog chain, clothes line, even old tires. Having an actual tow-bar was a novelty.

It wasn’t until we were out on the western flatlands, cruising the I-80 with fifty miles to go until Grand Island, Nebraska, that we learned why it’s always prudent to trailer one’s vehicle.

We never knew the real cause, but speculated that it was due to his truck being much larger than mine (a fact of which he never failed to remind me). Whatever the reason, the Ice Cream Truck began to sway viciously whenever we approached thirty miles per hour.

And naturally, when there’s a swaying Ice Cream Truck three feet off the rear bumper of your Dodge Ramcharger, your first response is to hit the brakes. Bad idea. Because when you touched the brakes, not only did the swaying of the Ice Cream Truck become substantially worse, but now a wicked shimmy started up in the front end of the Ramcharger.

The only way to make it stop was to let the vehicles coast down to walking speed, wait for the load to settle down, and then start again.

We’d done all that we could to resolve the situation: jettisoned everything of Kirby’s belongings that he was willing to part with and piled the remainder into the back of the Ramcharger, had taken the near-disastrous decision to remove the Ice Cream Truck’s drive-shaft, and even unbolted his spare tire and bungee’d it to the top of the Ramcharger.

(I’m willing to bet that if you drive slowly down the I-80 somewhere between Fort Morgan and Sterling, you might see a few of his kitchen utensils still lying in the ditch, like ancient artifacts of our time there.)

But it wasn’t enough: despite all our efforts, the vehicle’s top speed was barely thirty-three miles per hour.

And yet, as morning came, the situation was relatively peaceful. We’d been driving all night, and for the past few hours had been on a long, straight stretch of highway with few hills. The Ice Cream Truck had been behaving for the most part, and our confidence was high that we finally had things well under control.

I was lying in the back of the Ramcharger, dozing in the small coffin-shaped space I’d managed to carve out between the cardboard boxes and bits of furniture, and had just sat up to look out the window at the rising sun when I saw the yellow warning sign ahead – 9% grade – with a blocky little picture of a semi-truck pointing downhill and the stern advice to use low gear.

An icy fist clenched at my belly. As we crested the hill, Kirby suddenly yelled out “INCOMIIIIING” and that’s when the terror began.

There before us was a long stretch of seemingly vertical 4-lane highway, separated in the middle by a narrow grassy shoulder. Unsuspecting motorists surrounded us on all sides: commuters eating egg McMuffins, sipping coffee from styrofoam to-go cups, listening to talk radio and pondering the day’s coming events.

Several miles away at the bottom of the hill was a tiny metal arch bridge crossing a ribbon of river, small and black in the distance. The hills were bright with morning dew; clumps of elm and oak trees dotted the horizon. In the early sunlight, under an expansive and flawless blue sky, it was a beautiful morning.

This bucolic scene was about to be shattered by the Hanson brothers and 4 tons of rolling, swerving, out-of-control metal and household furniture.

The first shimmy hit almost immediately, but Kirby was ready for it – the last few hours of driving had left him well-prepared. He corrected easily, and I had some small hope that we would survive.

But since we were going downhill, our speed steadily increased, making it more and more difficult for him to manage the delicate balance between gentle braking and unbridled free-fall down the steep grade before us. Kirby began to mumble to himself, “Oh shit, oh Christ, hold on, whafuck,” and that’s when we went completely and utterly, Jesus take the wheel, out of control.

The trucks began to oscillate violently from side to side. Cars all around us scattered for the ditch, their horns honking, fists and middle fingers waving, astonished drivers wide-eyed at the incredible spectacle they were witnessing.

A huge invisible force lifted me from the couch cushions on which two minutes before I’d been peacefully napping, slamming me into the roof. Above the din of squealing tires and honking horns I heard this weird whoofing sound as the air left my lungs.

I twisted about in an attempt to gain my knees, but it was impossible: the force was too great. We swerved left, right, left again, using up both lanes and most of the shoulders. I was flung about the back seat with impunity. I bounced hard once, twice, hit my head against the ceiling, and then levitated sideways through the air, striking the left window and bouncing away to crash into the boxes piled on my right.

Kirby was screaming incoherently, laughing like a maniac one moment and crying like a little girl the next as he wrestled with the steering wheel, trying valiantly to regain control of the runaway vehicles. I howled in sheer terror. The truck was rocking so hard the tires were hitting the wheel-wells with a WHAM…WHAM…WHAM sound: the hand of God was knocking, and he wanted in bad.

I could smell burning rubber and knew the trucks would jackknife at any second, scattering us across the freeway amidst the debris and burning wreckage of couches and Christmas ornaments, paperbacks and garden tools, spread about in flaming heaps across this western highway where the cowboys and buffalo once roamed.

My mortality, frequently in question since my early teens, seemed now an especially fragile and precious thing. I was certain this was the end.

To this day, I don’t know how he saved us. We slalomed down that interstate for fully two miles before he finally managed to get us under control. After what seemed an eternity, we coasted to a stop and parked neatly on the shoulder. We were alone by now; our fellow commuters were far behind us, observing the madness from a safe distance.

We opened the doors and climbed slowly from the truck, shaking uncontrollably. Despite the early hour, I grabbed a couple beers from the cooler, and we sat on the hood to watch the sunrise.

Two days later, we made it safely home.

There were other towings, both before and after this one: we never did learn our lesson. We once dragged a newly-purchased but now broken-down ‘62 Corvair out of a Minneapolis intersection during rush hour using a chain of twisted-together coathangers. One Saturday afternoon, we nearly killed a family of four in a Dodge minivan while towing my ’67 Chevelle: the front tire had come free, sailed high into the air, then hopscotched down the road like a superball from hell before finally rolling to a stop in a distant swamp.

We towed trucks and cars, motorcycles and office chairs, in the snow, rain, and sun, using chains and ropes and tow-bars and a long yellow strap we named Stretch. But we always towed together.

When he got the brain cancer three years ago, I knew our towing days were over. But even in his final days, we still talked about those times we had, laughing at our foolishness, and our good luck.

Kirby Gordon Hanson died yesterday, March 10th, 2011, in a hospice not far from the area where we grew up. My Dad was with him at the end: he held my brother’s hand and saw him off to that final rest. He went peacefully.

I wish right now we were back on that highway in Nebraska, drinking beer and laughing off the terror. I’d like to try it all over again, just one more time.

I’ll miss you bro. Sleep well.