Last week I ran out of space in telling about how our move to Pea Ridge in 2002 experienced truck troubles on I-540, and encountered utter confusion at the end of our trip. My friend Glenn Schenk and I had lost the radiator fluid in our U-Haul truck due to a leaky water pump, had bought gallons and gallons of water in West Fork so we could limp in with the ailing truck, and finally arrived at Pea Ridge an hour late. Nancy and Glenn’s wife Barbara met us in the driveway as we arrived, but before we could begin regaling them with the story of our adventure, they were onto us, especially me, with “Why didn’t you answer your walkie-talkie?

Why were you crossing to the wrong side of the interstate? How could you just vanish? and We’ve been worried sick!”

We had expected our wives to be concerned because we were late, but now we were utterly confused. They seemed to know things they couldn’t know, since they were miles away, or so we supposed. Glenn and I had pictured them worrying about us in Pea Ridge at the house, wondering why we were late. Now we were discovering that they had actually been in the vicinity of our troubles, heading south of West Fork, and that they had spotted me and my pickup crossing over from the southbound lane of I-540 to the northbound lane as I made my way back to our stranded U-Haul.

I had noticed a blaring horn from the car behind me when I did that cross-over, but I paid no attention. Now I find out that the blaring horn was Barbara’s, and that Nancy at that moment had been frantically trying to hail me on the walkie-talkie.

Well, as I said last week, I had turned off my walkietalkie, since our wives had gone on to Pea Ridge, so we thought, and would be well out of walkie-talkie range. Earlier, we had changed from our Plan A, the three-vehicle caravan plan, to Plan B, with the wives’ car going on ahead and our trucks following on more slowly.

It seems that as Barbara and Nancy neared Fayetteville, they got worriedabout us. What if we had trouble on the road? What if there was an accident?

What if we were alone and helpless? So they had decided to turn around and go back to check on us, and to take up the original travel plan again.

Now we men are always thinking that our wives don’t really need to worry about us so that if we have vehicle trouble we will probably find a way to handle it. Yet we know that they do worry anyway. If we had had a cell phone with us, we could have called them. But since Nancy had borrowed our cell phone in Russellville earlier, it turned out that she and Barbara had both of the cell phones in their car. I suppose we could have called from West Fork, but I didn’t know either of their new cell phone numbers andthere was as yet no phone in the house at Pea Ridge.

After they spotted me crossing over the interstate, the coincidences began going all wrong. Barbara and Nancy, instead of following me across, continued on south, looking for the next cross-over. They had to drive eight miles south, cross over, and come back northbound for eight miles. Bythat time Glenn and I were on the move again, and had temporarily pulled off at the West Fork exit. Rock formations there block any view from the main highway, so when Nancy and Barbara passed, they didn’t see us or our truck.

I’m still not sure what lessons are to be learned from that experience. We men took it as a lesson that our wives shouldn’t worry so much about us.

Our wives took it as a lesson that they should never leave us on our own resources again. With everyone having a cell phone, as we do today, the whole thing might never have happened. Maybe I should have left my walkie-talkie powered on, even though I supposed that any possible caller was miles and miles away. Maybe the whole thing suggests that trying to switch from Plan A, toPlan B, then back again, is pretty much a recipe for chaos.

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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.

Community, Pages 5 on 04/13/2011