Met up again with Paul Currier at Grantham Town Hall. He asked if I’d been telling the story he told me last time we met.
“What is it?” I asked.
He reminded me.
Indeed, I have not been telling that story, but it’s well worth telling, so I’m going to start. Sometimes I have to hear a story two or three times before it sticks in my head. Thanks, Paul, for your patience. Here’s his true story. He witnessed this exchange, between his uncle (I believe) and a Canadian trucker.
Said the trucker: “I was rolling along with load of logs, come to a long steep downgrade and, wouldn’t you know, the brakes failed. I was picking up speed, headed for disaster on the curve I knew was coming up, when a tire blew. That slowed my down some. Then another tire blew, and another and another. Six in all. Those blowouts slowed me down enough I could pull over to the side of the road and I was saved.”
Said the uncle: "I was out horn pouting in the dead of night with some buddies. We were fishing by the light of a kerosene lantern and having good luck, until somebody leaned the wrong way, and somebody else overcompensated, and the boat flipped. We swam to shore, pulling the upside-down boat behind us. Wa’n’t we some upset! We lost the poles, the tackle, the fish we caught; we even lost the lantern.
"Next morning, we returned to the scene and with a grappling hook managed to locate and haul up most of what we’d lost. Even the lantern. The surprising thing: That kerosene lantern was still lit."
Said the trucker: "You’re pulling my leg. There’s no way that lantern would have still been lit."
Said the uncle: "I’ll blow out the lantern if you blow up five of them six tires."
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