......I looked back
toward the bottom of the bridge, and the overloaded log truck was just barely
moving. As we watched, it slowly inched up the bridge until it was almost to
us, and then the driver nearly stopped as he shifted the gears into double low.
Heck, I reached out and touched the logs as they inched by, and then I had a
thought.
“John Clayton, hop
on the back of this danged truck and crawl up on top of the logs.”
“Wait a minute,
Richard. Where’s this truck going?”
“Just across the
bridge to the Calion Lumber Company. We’ll save a little time, and we won’t
have to run down the other side of this narrow bridge.”
We hopped on the
back of the truck, and nestled down between a couple of big logs, but that turned
out to be a mistake because the logs
were just stacked up between side-rails and every time that durn truck hit a
bump the logs shifted.
“Ahaaa! Get out from between the danged
logs before we’re squished like a bug!” I yelled.
We finally made it
to the top of the pile of logs, and we straddled the top log like a couple of
cowboys. Shoot, I figured the ride would just be down the bridge to where the
sawmill was, but I was wrong. Gosh, that log truck might have been real slow
going up the steep side of the bridge, but it sure wasn’t slow going down on
the other side. Heck, in about three seconds we were flying down that bridge
like a turpentined cat, and as John Clayton yelled and pointed, we flew right
past the Calion Lumber Company. Oh my
God, What on earth have I gotten us into?
Yeah, and I was
thinking about what Momma would say or do if she knew we were riding on top of
a load of logs just roaring down the Calion Highway. Heck, I didn’t have a clue
where that load of logs was headed after the truck passed the sawmill at
Calion. What if the truck was taking a
load of log down to Louisiana?
I thought. My
gosh, we might be days getting back home, and they’ll be dragging the river for our bodies. Talk
about getting in trouble! Shoot, with half the country dragging the river and
Cook’s Lake we’d be in so much trouble when we showed back up you wouldn’t
believe it. We had to get off that danged log truck somehow.
We were just
whizzing along heading toward El Dorado where I figured we’d be able to jump
off when the truck stopped for a stoplight. Then, I figured we’d probably be
able to hitchhike home, but at best we’d be way after 10 getting home, and we’d
be in big trouble. As it turned out, however,
we never made it to El Dorado. About a half-mile from the Norphlet cutoff, I
noticed a car coming up real fast behind us, and then—oh my gosh—red lights
came on. There were police car lights, and then the siren, which just sounded
so loud my ears rang, and I nearly barfed Heck, of course the log truck pulled
over, and I figured when the policeman went up to talk with the truck driver,
we’d sneak off.
It didn’t work out
that way.
“Boys, come down
off those logs!”
