Frozen Tire and the Poopsicle

 

I made several friends during the time Annie and I owned our property in British Columbia.  They all had stories about their adventures in the Canadian wilderness; about their run-ins with bears; fishing and boating in the Fraser River; and battling the icy temperatures of the frigid winters.

But few of their stories could rival those of American expatriate Wendell, also known as “Frozen Tire”, especially the one about the poopsicle.

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Frozen Tire got his nickname when he lived in Penny, BC while working at the saw mill in Upper Fraser, about a 40 mile drive.  Now, a commute of that distance is not a big deal most of the time but, when the Canadian winter descends, dropping snow and ice by the foot, what is normally less than an hour’s drive extends to take up a big chunk of the day.

Well, one winter evening Wendell was working around his home place when he noticed that his pickup had a flat.  I don’t know if the hole in the tire was too big, or if he didn’t have a repair kit but he wasn’t able to repair the flat.  Worse yet, he didn’t have a spare.

How was he going to be able to get to work?

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Canadian bush dwellers are well known for their resourcefulness and, ignoring the lack of a repair kit or spare tire, Wendell proved he is no different.  He mulled the problem at dinner that night and it occurred to him that the tire might not hold air…but maybe it could still hold water.

Are you with me?

Wendell filled the tire with water and laid it flat on the ground outside the house while he slept.  Sure enough, next morning it was frozen solid.  It took only a few minutes to put the frozen tire on the truck…and gain a nickname.

Oh, and he made it to work too.

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Frozen Tire’s truck and his job at the saw mill figured in another of his adventures.

Penny, the town where Wendell lived, was about 10 miles beyond the end of the maintained road at that time.  The province had stopped building the road at Longworth and had no plans to extend it.  Tired of taking a boat or hopping the train to get in and out of their town, the few residents of Penny got together and bulldozed a road through the bush to Longworth.  Despite being built by amateurs and not being maintained by the provincial government, the road was eminently drivable…during good weather.

Unfortunately, the weather in the Canadian bush is frequently anything but good.

During one spell of bad weather the road between Longworth and Penny washed out.  Wendell, however, still needed to get to work.

What was a resourceful Canadian bush-dweller to do?

Our quick thinking hero remembered the fact that the railroad track never washed out and came up with a solution to his problem.  He drove his pickup to a spot where the road crossed the tracks and turned so that the truck’s tires straddled the rails.

The drive westward was pretty straight, but very bumpy.  Not sure how long the drive would take he’d eaten a big meal.  He soon came to realize that it had been a bad idea.  As you know, railroads are laid for trains to travel on the rails, and for NOTHING to travel on the ties, which are only there to keep the rails a consistent distance apart.  Wendell’s wheelbase was too wide to drive on the rails so…?

The tires of Wendell’s truck bounced in and out of the gaps between the ties, jouncing the poor man, and especially his full stomach.  It soon became painfully obvious to him that he was going to have to stop the truck or there was going to be a mess inside the cab.

He parked the vehicle and listened for a possible oncoming train as he ran into the woods.  He got his trousers down just…in…time.

Before long he realized that one of his biggest fears was about to be realized.

A train was coming.

Wendell’s truck was on the tracks and neither he nor the train could stop…and they didn’t.  The man could only squat where he was and watch painfully at the locomotive barreling toward his pickup.  Upon impact, the truck disintegrated.  The engineer was eventually able to stop his train and run back to search for the poor driver whose life he was sure had just ended.

I don’t know if it was relief at finding out he hadn’t killed anyone or his amusement at hearing the owner’s story, but the engineer chose not to report Wendell for parking on the tracks.

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One thing all my friends in the Canadian bush agreed on was that winter isn’t as big a deal as many of us southern dwellers might think.  They have a lot of fun snowshoeing and skiing and ice skating and snowmobiling.  But they also emphasized that winters are great, as long as you plan and prepare for them well ahead of time.

Which brings us to Wendell’s outhouse.

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You see, when you don’t have running water you will probably depend on an outhouse for certain necessary bodily functions.  And if your lifestyle requires you to use an outhouse, you have to keep in mind that, eventually, they do fill up.

Yeah.

Like I said, you have to plan ahead.  You don’t want to have to dig a new hole for your outhouse in the middle of the winter when the ground is frozen solid for months at a time.

Needless to say, one winter Wendell failed to plan ahead for that.

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People in the bush may be more hardy than those of us who live farther south, but they are still human.  Nobody likes the sudden shock of sitting a naked rear end on a cold toilet seat, and below zero is re-e-e-eally cold.  So everyone comes up with one form or another of insulation for their backsides.

Wendell had carved a toilet seat out of Styrofoam.  He’d keep the four inch thick seat in the house where it would stay warm, then tuck it inside his coat when he had to make the trek to the little house out back.  Sitting on the warm Styrofoam spacer was a lot more acceptable than the alternative.

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Unfortunately for Wendell, as the winter wore on the space under the outhouse filled up faster and faster because “deposits” froze almost instantly, in whatever position they landed …including vertical.

Yep.

One day my friend was in a particular hurry and forgot to take his Styrofoam seat along.  His rumbling gut told him he didn’t have time to slog back through the deep snow to get it either.  In his rush he didn’t pay close attention when he flipped open the lid, turned around as he dropped trou, and sat down quickly…four inches lower than usual.

At the risk of being too indelicate, I’ll say he found the cold particularly “penetrating” that day.

Remember the word “poopsicle”?

Yeah, it’s a thing.

 

 

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