A little background. I grew up in rural Maine-- ha, Maine is rural. Except Portland, which is a suburb of Boston. Anyway, we lived on a gravel road that was only maintained up to our house. Beyond that it deteriorated into the ubiquitous New England logging road. If you went about three miles along the logging road, you could get to where another road was maintained from somewhere else, and you could get back onto the maintained road system of the next town over.
So. when I was about 8 yo, my dad woke up in the middle of the night to hear a motor running and some strange sounds coming from out by the logging road. He went to my bedroom to listen (I never woke up). He opened the window and heard some drunk guys with a vehicle out at the muddy log road, carrying on. Their conversation went something like this (quite loudly) :
"Hey, why'd ya have ta come through heeya anyhow? We ought ta tuhn around."
"We can't tuhn around. We'd get stuck. I don't wanna get stuck again."
"Well, this ought to do the trick. How much do ya spose we oughta put?"
"I dunno. I guess we got half a co'd in theya already."
Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.
My dad instantly realized they were stealing his firewood he had stacked by the logging road. He ran outside, grabbing his shotgun on the way. He got out and found the men loading his firewood into their passenger van. It was facing out-- they had just driven all the way through the logging road and came out to firm ground. Evidently they did not realize they were "out of the woods" because they were desperately piling firewood in the back of the van for ballast.
Anyway, my dad ran out there in front of the van (in the headlights) just as they were starting to pull out, and yelled, "Are you going to put that wood back, or am I going to blow a hole in your radiator?"
They all jumped out of their socks, jumped out, and were saying, "what, is this your wood? We were just gonna borrow it! We're sorry! Where did you come from? What are you doing out here in the woods? We didn't know anybody lived around here! We'll put it back! We're sorry! We just thought we were gonna get stuck again! We'll put it right back!
They were lifting the sticks of firewood out of the back of the van and stacking it neatly on the ground like it were boxes of eggs or something, setting it down gently so as not to damage it. My dad thought that was so funny, he felt a little bad, and said, "You don't have to stack it." They said, "Oh, we'll stack it, we'll stack it!" And they did. My dad faded into the night and watched from a distance. When they had it all out, they piled back in the van and peeled out in the gravel and roared down the road to get the dodge out of dodge.
In the morning, I wondered what that neat little pile of wood was doing by the end of the driveway....
