The few years I spent in the United States Coast Guard provided me with numerous memories and adventures. Some of those adventures became iconic, somewhat demanding moments for my young adult life. Others provided a measure of comic relief that helped to define my time at Station Umpqua River. One of the most comical all started with an attempted recovery of a rare, hand blown, Japanese fishing net glass ball flotation device, an attempt that spiraled into a near disaster.
Back in 1974, glass balls were pretty rare and prized collector items. Some of them had been floating around the Pacific for decades. They are even more rare today. Back then a beachcomber could occasionally run across one as it rolled up on the beach through the surf. They ranged in size from small ones about the size of a baseball, up to larger ones as big as a basketball. Sometimes they would even retain a portion of the netting that encapsulated them. They were used to keep fishing nets afloat.
I never found one, but managed to get caught up in an incident of someone trying to retrieve one. Back then, our station still operated with a rather large and cumbersome communications system that included a bulky switchboard and a 1940's era teletype. All of the stations up and down the coast were connected via their own communication lines, Telephone Lines. This, of course, was pre-digital, pre-cell phones, pre-laptop computers, and way before Internet email was even thought of. Everything was still analog. Those Coast Guard telephone lines were serviced by technicians known as TT's or Telephone Technicians. As old as it was, it worked and worked well...most of the time.
One day two TT's drove up in their 4x4 Ford pickup. Somewhere along those communication lines there was some kind of issue they needed to check out and do some maintenance on. They checked in with us to verify that we'd be available to provide some assistance should it be required and of course we were. For them to gain access to those lines, they had to drive along beach. Well about an hour later our phone rang and it turned out to be them. They had climbed one of the line poles, tapped into the line, and dialed our station number. The conversation went something like this.
"Hey, we need a little help out here..we are...uh. sort of stuck in the sand. Can you bring your 4x4 truck down here and pull us out?"
"Yeah...I guess we can.."
"Can you sort of hurry up...we need you down here as quickly as you can get here."
Me and one or two other guys jumped into our big ole Ford 4x4 that had one of those high powered PTO (Power Take Off) winches mounted on the front bumper and headed out. A few miles down the beach we found them and what we saw caused us to wonder in amazement as to how they got themselves into the predicament they were in.
Their truck wasn't just stuck, it was sitting on the edge of the surge and waves were washing all around it. It was buried all the way up to its frame in the sand...and the tide was coming in. Waves were already washing all around it. Their story went something along this line.
"Well, we were driving along when I saw a large glass ball roll up on one of the waves, so I told my partner to stop so I could get out and retrieve it. Well...he didn't stop, he just turned toward it and pulled up next to where it was rolling around. I jumped out, grabbed it, jumped back in and he tried to backout but stalled the truck. Before he could get it started, a big wave rolled in and flooded the engine and...well, now we're really stuck."
After we stopped rolling around on the beach laughing, we hauled the winch cable out to their truck wading thru knee deep water and hooked it to their back bumper. Problem was, they were so buried in the sand, we could not pull them out. Instead, with nothing to anchor on, we were pulling our truck toward them. We tried to pull them off by taking slack out of the line and bumping them free by backing up. No good. After several unsuccessful attempts, we got on the radio and called the station. One of the guys there drove a 4x4 Blazer with a winch and we had him come out to give us another vehicle.
By the time he arrived, the tide had rolled in a good ways and there were literally breakers crashing over the hood. We managed to hook up his winch, but even with two vehicles, we still could not break them loose. We were really in a fix. Nothing we tried worked. About that time, a third vehicle drove up and the driver got out to offer some assistance. With three vehicles using three winches, we still were unable to break them loose. By this time the tide had really rolled in, but we noticed that every time a wave hit the truck, it looked like it tried to float it a few inches. So we took a different approach.
We had the two outer vehicles place tension on their winches, and we let out a few inches of slack with our 4x4. When a wave tried to float the stuck truck, I hit the clutch and snapped pulled in reversed. After four or five attempts we managed to pull them out of the sand and roll them up to high ground.
We towed them back to the station where the mechanics removed the carburetor and dried it out, pulled all the plugs and dried them off and blew air thru the alternator to dry it out and low and behold, the truck fired off first time. The two TT's thanked us and drove off with the glass ball in hand.
The story does not end there. A week or so later, I had to go down to the Group office down at Coos Bay for a reason I have long ago forgotten. Inside the building there were offices along the perimeter with a few cubicles in the center. As I walked thru, I ran into those two TT's and rather matter of factly asked them out loud if they had been chasing glass balls and getting stuck anytime lately. Both of them motioned for me to be quiet and not to speak about that incident especially inside the Group office...seems they never told anyone about how they got stuck and why.
From time to time, I will run across a glass ball inside an antique store. Just the sight of one of those iconic relics brings back that comical memory of how a rare Japanese fishing net flotation device created havoc for two TT's.
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