Little Boys and Big Trucks

Arkansas is hot and humid in the summer time. In the summer of 1980, my parents were building a new house on the side of a hill. I was about 6 years old, a wiry little boy and full of energy. Friends and neighbors were helping my parents this particular Sunday, and my brother Gregg and I kept getting in the way of people carrying boards, blocks, and tools. Finally we were told to get in the pickup truck and stay out of the way. 

 The pickup was an old 1970’s Dodge. Gregg and I began to pretend we were some type of animal (I can’t remember what) and we began going back and forth from the bed to the cab by crawling through the side windows. After what seemed like forever to a 5- and 6-year-old, this got very old, and we searched for another way to entertain ourselves. 

 This pickup had an automatic transmission with the gear lever located in the middle of the dash. The lever started with P at the top and dropped through N, R, D, 2, 1 to the bottom. This gadget intrigued me so I grabbed the lever and jerked it all the way from P down to 1. What do you suppose happens when a truck is parked facing down a steep hill and some knucklehead puts it in “1”? The truck suddenly began rolling down the hill. I turned around on the seat and looked out the back window to see the half-built house and all the people growing smaller. 

Gregg, showing his aptitude for mechanical things at an early age, jumped down to the floorboard and began pushing on the brake pedal with both hands. Quick thinking! But what do you suppose happens when a 60 pound 5-year-old pushes on the brake pedal of a 5,000 pound truck with his hands? Absolutely nothing! 

 This seems like a funny situation, and it was. But two elements were involved which could have turned this comedy into a disaster. First of all, at the bottom of this long, steep hill was a grove of huge oak trees. Oak has a reputation for being some of the hardest wood. What do you suppose would happen if a 5,000 pound truck with two little boys inside rolled down a steep hill and smashed into one or more of these large trunks? On second thought, let’s not think about that. Suffice to say I might not be sitting here today writing the story. 

 Second, there was a large rock sticking up out of the ground where our front patio was supposed to be poured. It was so large that it had not been removed yet. Everybody tripped over that rock! Dad had tripped on it several times. Now Dad happened to see the truck begin to roll downhill from his position installing rafters. He dropped from the rafters and bolted out the newly framed front door. Now what do you supposed happens when a man bolts out of a door with a large rock in front of it at top speed? Yeah, that’s what you would expect: SPLAT!!! 

But an angel must have boosted Dad because he went flying over the big rock and charged down the hill after the truck. He caught up to the truck with amazing speed and yanked open the driver’s side door. He lunged into the seat and was about to stomp on the brakes when he noticed little Gregg hunched over the brake pedal. 

“Get out of the way so I can push the brake!” he told Gregg. 

Finally the truck came to a stop, just short of the large oak trees. It still seems superhuman to me that Dad dropped down off the roof and caught up with a pickup that was accelerating downhill under the force of gravity. We all believe it was a miracle, and that sometimes angels give us the strength or the power to perform the miracle rather than doing it themselves.