I was just thinking back on some of our past summer adventures as carnies.
We've had some interesting experiences and learned how to deal with stressful circumstances as a result.
This one time...
We had a 11/2 year old and an 8 month old. We were driving from a northern town to a southern town about 7 hours from each other. We sell 80 flavors of hard ice cream from our concession stand. The plan was to stop in the City and pick up some ice cream then keep on driving to our destination. I was driving the kids in our 97 Golf and Mike was driving the Freightliner with concession towing the travel trailer. Once we were pretty much in the middle of no where the Freightliner engine blew! We stopped at Smalltownville and Mike muttered and tinkered and hammered and made some phone calls. He ended up leaving us to nap, play and hang out at the travel trailer while he drove to the City for engine parts. Hours later he returned with the parts and continued to mutter, hammer, grunt and fix. Somehow he patched up that engine over night, at least we drove it the next day. The short stop put us behind schedule and we were late getting to our fair (which had already set up and started). In order to save time, I was sent ahead to pick up our ice cream order. Yes I picked up about twenty 11.5L pails of ice cream plus 3 large boxes of ice cream cones in our Golf. Yes the kids were with me. I think I even stacked a box of cones right above my son's head. Let's just say visibility was limited. You'd think with that load and crying kids and a stressed out me, that it would have been us to have the catastrophe. We didn't. We made it to our meeting point and axiously waited for Daddy while eating burgers and hoping the ice cream wasn't melting too fast. We had a great view of the road that Mike was to arrive from. I just about choked on my burger when I looked up and saw Mike standing beside the road attempting to remove what looked like our trailer's wheels (but no trailer) from a very busy freeway! It turned out that it was our trailer's wheels, and it's axle! No problem. With the help of a kind Samaritan we loaded up the axle into the concession, prayed and kept driving. The trailer had two axles, that one must have been extra! Mike told me that the axle falling off the trailer happened just shortly after our generator took a tumble out of the back of our concession which had accidentally been left open. Ya, the generator that keeps our ice cream frozen when we have no power to hook up to. Luckily it is a high quality, tough piece of equipment and only suffered some scratches to it's dignity. The remainder of the trip consisted of stopping on the side of the road and changing oil every hour, due to issues with the quick engine patch job & of course checking to make sure our trailer wasn't being dragged along on it's back bumper (considering the strain the remaining axle was under)! All in all, what should have been a 7 hour drive took us about 36 hours. Fun times!
Looking back we laugh and shake our heads! Mike said today, " I can't believe we drove all that way with a blown engine and a missing axle!" "ya", I added, "and 2 small kids and a load of melting ice cream". I'd like to say that we smiled through it all, prayed and encouraged one another with kind words and scripture! ha ha ahahahahaha! We did persevere. We did not give up. We asked forgiveness for, and forgave harsh words and impatient looks. We did pray, and found that we don't always get what we ask for. Some things we got that we didn't ask for were: helpful bystanders, enough money to pay for the repairs, a profit from our spot at the fair (making it all worth while), a convenient campsite, first hand experience that things work if you worry or not. Ironically it seems that these situations of panic or mayhem are what I look back on as defining moments in our marriage. Times where I've learned to be flexible, patient, positive, understanding, hopeful, and encouraging were times when I've felt the most anxious, confused, discouraged and rigid. It turns out what doesn't kill you DOES make you stronger.
I plan to post more memories from past summer excitement. My hope for this summer that we will have less to learn and more remember.
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