What Could Go Wrong?
In 1951 my dad was in the house moving business. He also farmed cotton, corn and hay for his 100 cow herd. He never acquired a large cattle trailer with which to haul his cattle to market. All he had was a one axle 4x8 ft. wooden enclosed trailer that could only haul two cows or maybe four calves at one time.
On this one occasion he didn’t wean the steer calves as early as he usually did and instead of the usual 350-400 lb. calves he happened to have eight steers that weighed about 600 lbs. each. Instead of having to haul them to the auction two at a time he figured on doing this in just one trip. He was good friends with Mr. Prause from Prause’s Meat Market and he decided to borrow his heavy duty two-axle trailer. Now Mr. Prause used this trailer to haul wild bulls and such so it was built pretty heavy and stout. Now the problem that arose was when dad loaded these eight 600 lb. steers into this heavy trailer, all he had to pull it with was our 1947 international ½ ton pickup truck. That little pickup was so loaded down in the back that as I watched dad leave our yard and cross our cattle guard that rear bumper was hanging so low it looked like it was throwing sparks crossing those pipes. Even a young kid like me could see that there was a rolling accident waiting to happen.
Once dad got past Cozy Corner and upon Highway 155, he approached a creek right before he got to Post Oak Beer Joint. This creek ran at an angle to the road and so the narrow bridge spanning it formed a wicked “S” curve. When dad tried to approach this downhill “S” curve, he applied his brakes and found out that there were none. You see as he started going downhill the steers in the trailer all shifted forward putting all of their weight on the tongue part hooked to the small truck. This resulted in the front axle of his pickup to be air borne and the brakes couldn’t be effective. Being airborne the steering wheel also proved to be useless. Even a pilot’s license wouldn’t help at this time. The truck did jack knife sideways into a large tree and naturally the tree won. The trailer ended up on its side spilling all of the steers.
Luckily none of them were seriously hurt and eventually all were rounded up by guys on horseback from the auction place. Dad also was unhurt except for his feelings. The only damage was to his pickup. The truck bed was crushed beyond repair. He scoured the county and finally found a truck bed to replace the wrecked one. The only problem was it turned out to be blue in color and his pickup was red. Well he never bothered to repaint it. He said he needed that truck every day and so it stayed blue AND red for the rest of its days. He said that he didn’t have to put his name or house moving logo on the door because anyone seeing the red and blue truck running around town or the countryside would know that that was that KANA HOUSE MOVER in his countrified, not out of factory two-toned truck!