The first of January. A thick cloud cover blanketed the sky over the southern part of Minnaluna, dimming the light and releasing a light but steady rain. Well into the morning, traffic was still minimal, with most everyone either sleeping in after the New Year's celebration, or having arrived at the houses of family members or loved ones to spend the day. Shops were closed, businesses were closed, all employees having gotten the past couple of days and coming day or two off for the New Year's celebration.
A specific truck roaring down a road stood out all the more due to the light traffic. It already stood out massively under any regular circumstances; it was a 1966 DAF 2600 cabover-style truck, rigid-style but with its large cargo box completely removed and even the frame behind the boxy cab heavily modified to hold an enormous towing boom with two winches, two more winches mounted in the rear bumper area, a winch on either side and two winches under the front bumper. Several diamond-plate steel storage boxes were behind the cab and on the sides - one on the left side behind the large fuel tank, three on the right side. The dual-wheel rear axle had been replaced with a steering axle holding single wheels with giant tires, there were several heavy-duty slider bars along the sides, a set of hydraulic outriggers, an amount of marker lights and work lights all over, and three flat round rotating orange beacon lights mounted in a row on the roof. And the boxy cab, with an extension on the back resting over the storage boxes, as well as the storage boxes and the large rectangular fuel tank, was painted an almost shocking bright pink color.
It was followed down the road by a just as shockingly pink 1976 Series III Land Rover 109 of which the rear side-windows were replaced with sheetmetal inserts, and which was lifted and rode on very large tires with very aggressive tread. Both vehicles had a wavy logo on the front doors reading "Heavy Liftin'" over the name of the city of Rainbow Falls along with a phone number and a web-URL; the Land Rover, pulling a flat car trailer, was driven by a relatively young puma boy, with a teenage puma girl in the passenger's seat talking into a camera - the DAF truck held two more pumas and a Dalmatian dog in its boxy cab; an older puma girl behind the wheel, and a mature puma woman in the passenger's seat holding a camera pointed at herself. The spotted dog was a feral pet dog.
Over the roar of the engine and the constant squeak of the pantograph windshield wipers moving back and forth across the divided windshield, the puma woman was talking into the camera she was pointing at herself in a quite chipper manner.
"Well, good morning, everyone! It's the first of January, so happy new year to all of you! As you can see, work doesn't stop just because it's the first day of a new year, and this year seems to be starting off with a bit of a bang for someone. So a call was made to us by someone who got herself into a bit of a pickle. She was apparently on her way to Canal City North, but missed the turnoff to the Minna River Bridge and got stuck in the mud on the Rainbow Trail. When trying to get out and turn around, she slid completely off the road and ended up almost on her side in the ditch. So even though it's a holiday, there's no rest for the wicked like us! Of course, with it being a holiday, all our staff is at home where they should be, with their families, so it's just us this time. As you can see, I'm in our DAF wrecker, behind the wheel..." She turned the camera a bit, "...is my daughter Sonja who will be doing most of the driving, and behind us..." She turned the camera at the large rearview mirror on the passenger door, "...is my son Thomas driving one of our Land Rovers, and he has my other daughter Marion with her, who will be doing most of the camera work. Fortunately we're not up in the mountains, so she won't have to get her drone out this time, although I'm not sure if she's happy or disappointed about that, haha! So it's a family affair, and of course we also..." She turned the camera a bit again and pointed it at the Dalmatian dog. "...have Confetti with us, although I don't know if we'll let her run a whole lot this time with how muddy it's gonna be out there. The weather is... well, have a look." She turned the camera around to the windshield. "Yeah, it's pretty miserable. Temperature is a very pleasant twenty Cerberus or sixty-eight Flutterbutts, but as you can see it's raining; not very heavily, but steady enough to have turned the Rainbow Trail into a muddy mess. I can't even remember how many people we've pulled out of the mud on that road. We took the DAF because from the picture we were sent, it looks like a job for the DAF; the car is an older Toyota 4Runner, and it tipped over so much in the ditch it's waving its left wheels in the air, and apparently she landed in the ditch quite hard because the right front wheel got damaged, so Thomas is bringing the trailer as well. The client must've hit a particularly deep part of the ditch, it does get quite deceiving along some parts of the road out there. But rain or shine, ditch or mountain, holiday or no; we'll get them out of there! So enjoy the ride, and we'll see you when we've reached the client."
She clipped the camera into a holder and sat back as best as she could in the rather upright passenger's seat, gently petting the head of the female Dalmatian dog while lighting a cigarette. This puma woman was Florence Beaumont, and as she had mentioned, the puma girl driving the truck was her daughter Sonja, 19 years old, while in the pink Land Rover following them were her son Thomas of 17 years old and her other daughter Marion of 14 years old. With the help of her three children, as well as a crew of eight employees, she ran the towing company Heavy Liftin', based in the medium mountain city of Rainbow Falls and specialized in recovering large and heavy vehicles and offroad recoveries. Originally started by her husband, Florence had taken over the running of the company after her husband had tragically lost his life in an accident on the Fangle Mountain in 2015.
They ran a wide array of specialized vehicles, pretty much all of them older ones, and each and every one of them at least modified in some manner while a few were highly modified or even fully custom-built for the heavy work they had to do. The DAF truck they were currently going down the road in, while looking incredibly heavy-duty, was actually one of their mid-tier tow trucks, built to be maneuverable on the narrower mountain roads and pulling vehicles from the side of the mountain after they had gone off the road. The Mauvelous Pink color all their vehicles were painted in had been an idea of the at the time still very young Marion - it was unconventional, definitely, but it certainly ensured the vehicles stood out and were always well visible in any terrain.
It only took about half an hour before they were splashing and slithering their way down a dirt road running alongside the wide Minna River. While normally a very nice road to drive on, especially with the views across the river, in rainy weather it turned into a muddy mess that required quite a bit of skill to navigate safely. Over the years, several attempts had been made to increase the quality of the road in wet weather, mainly by increasing the size and depth of the drainage ditches on either side - which had created some sections where, as Florence had mentioned, the ditches were deceivingly deep and steep. And sure enough, after several more minutes, they approached an older 1994 white Toyota 4Runner covered in mud and tipped precariously in the ditch on the left side of the road, its right doors resting against the side of the ditch and its left wheels dangling freely in the air.
Shielding herself from the rain with a somewhat ragged umbrella, a mouse woman with off-white fur perked up and waved as the two pink vehicles pulled up. All four of the pumas got out of the two pink vehicles, although Florence did indeed leave the Dalmatian dog in the cab of the DAF truck, rolling down the passenger door window so the dog could put its forepaws on the edge of the door and look out. The youngest puma girl quickly trotted up with a somewhat larger and more professional camera to film the proceedings as Florence walked over to the tipped car and shook paws with the mouse woman.
"Thank you so much for coming out in this nasty weather, and on January first even," she said gratefully.
"That's what we do," Florence smiled with a dismissive gesture of her free paw. "I'm Florence, that's my daughter Sonja, my son Thomas, and my other daughter Marion behind the camera there. We always film this stuff for our Youtube channel, do you mind about that? Or would you rather stay anonymous and blurred out?"
"So nice to meet you," the mouse woman smiled. "My name is Winnifred Sweeny, and, well, I'm stuck and in desperate need of help to get unstuck, so I don't mind at all if you film this. Heck, it's because of your Youtube channel that I knew to call you when I ended up in that ditch."
"You are quite stuck indeed," Florence nodded with a smile, turning to the tipped car. "What happened?"
"I was on my way back to Canal City North, that's where I live," the mouse woman explained. "I don't come out this way very often, so I'm not very familiar with the roads here, and I took a turn too early. As soon as I found this road starting to follow the river rather than crossing it, I tried to turn around and go back. That was a struggle, I can tell you, and quite scary as well. My car started sliding towards that ditch, so I hit the gas, but it didn't help and I flopped right into the ditch. I think I did some damage too, I heard quite an unsettling noise."
"Mmm-hm," Florence nodded, walking back and forth along the left side of the car to look along the backside and the front side. "Yeah, that front wheel doesn't look too healthy, does it now? Sonja, Tom, what do you make of it?"
The older puma girl leaned a paw on the hood of the white car to look down along the nose of it, while the puma boy simply jumped into the ditch despite the layer of water in it and leaned down to inspect the front right wheel which was pressed into the wheel well at more of an angle than was normal.
"Busted the lower ball-joint," he said, looking up. "Good thing we brought the trailer, this car ain't going anywhere on its own anymore."
"Right," Florence nodded. "While you're down there; any good points to attach to?"
The puma boy leaned over and ran a paw along the front bumper while turning his head to look under the front bumper.
"There's towing eyes under here, look good and solid." He knocked on the front bumper with his knuckles. "And this is a metal bumper, that'll hold up."
"What do you think, mom?" the older puma girl said. "Do you have a plan?"
Florence ran a paw over her whiskers while slowly stepping back and forth along the teetering car, leaning over every now and then to look under the front and rear bumpers and also looking at the ditch on the right side of the road. Eventually, she pulled her long and by now quite wet hair out of her face and stuffed it under the collar of her shirt, looking further down the road and pointing.
"There's a turnaround over there, that's where I need you, Tom, to go to and turn the LaRo around so you can point it this way. The DAF can clear this ditch, and we'll have to so Tom can pass us, and I want it pointing its nose to the river with the front wheels on the far side of the ditch. Go set that up, Sonja, but wait with wiggling it into position until Tom has come back from the turnaround and passed you." She pointed at the road in front of the sideways Toyota. "Tom, I want you right there, pointing in that direction and far enough away to give us some room to move around because we may need to pull this car forwards as well as sideways to get it out of there."
The two felines nodded.
"Got it, mom."
"On it, mom."
Sonja climbed back into the cab of the DAF truck, started the engine and began maneuvering the large vehicle around on the muddy road, backing it up towards the left ditch, then crawling the front wheels over the right ditch until they climbed up against the bank behind the ditch. Meanwhile Thomas got back into the Land Rover, started the engine and carefully drove it between the DAF truck and the Toyota 4Runner and further down the muddy road to a spot where both ditches curved outwards to create a wide passing point in the road so he could turn the car and trailer around and drive back to the other vehicles.
Once he had parked the combination out of the way, he walked back to the others and took one of two loops of thick rope Florence handed him.
"Since you already took a dip in the pool, go ahead and attach us, Tom," the mature puma woman smiled, taking a remote box with eight buttons from one of the storage boxes and setting the two winches on the boom to free-spool so she could pull out the synthetic lines, handing the right one to Thomas as well. "Put this one on the front, passenger side tow point."
"Gotcha, mom," the puma boy nodded.
He started walking backwards to the teetering Toyota, pulling out the winch line as he went. Florence pulled the other line over to the back of the 4Runner and knelt down to inspect the rear of it. Finding a towing eye, she wiggled the loop of rope through it as well as through the small loop at the end of the winch line, closing the loop of rope by pushing the large knot on one end through the sliding loop at the other end and tugging on it a bit. As she walked back to the rear of the DAF truck, so did the puma boy, tugging on the winch line a bit.
"All set, Tom?"
"Ready to go, mom."
"Good." The puma woman turned to the mouse woman. "Are the keys in it?"
"Oh, uh, yes they are," the mouse woman nodded.
"Good," Florence nodded with a smile again. "I'm going to put my daughter in there, if you don't mind."
"Oh, no, not at all, go ahead and do what you have to, please," the mouse woman smiled.
"Thank you." Florence turned to her oldest daughter, who was still in the cab of the DAF truck. "Sonja, I want you in the Toyota. We'll see if it can help despite the damage before we go straight to a dead-pull."
"Okiedoke, mom," the older puma girl nodded, hopping out of the truck and walking over to the tipped Toyota.
It took some acrobatics to get into the driver's seat of it due to the angle it was sitting at, but Sonja managed and rolled down the window once the door had shut behind her. She also put on the seatbelt, mainly to keep herself in the seat, and braced herself on the edge of the door with her left arm. Florence walked back and forth along the side of the car again and leaned over to inspect the lines and the ground, and smiled at her older daughter.
"Alright, see if you can start it."
The puma girl nodded and checked the manual gear lever, shifting into neutral before turning the key in the ignition. The headlights and the wipers came on, flickering and stuttering every now and then as Sonja attempted to start the car. It took a few new tries, but eventually the engine started running, and Sonja turned off the windshield wipers.
"Very good," Florence smiled. "Turn all the way driver, put it in low range and first gear, and hold the clutch until I tell you to help, okay? I'll pull the front this way first, and if needed I'll start pulling on the back as well."
"Ten-four, mom," Sonja smiled.
With a bit of a struggle, she turned the steering wheel all the way to the left while Florence walked back to the rear of the pink DAF truck and took the remote box after locking the free-spool on the two winches. She pulled in the line going to the back of the Toyota first until it was tight, then started pulling in the line going to the front of the 4Runner. The engine of the truck idled up, the winch whined, and slowly the tipped white car started moving a bit, its dangling left wheels spinning freely but moving back towards the muddy surface of the road. Florence gave light pulls in short bursts, constantly checking the position of the car and giving directions to her older daughter every now and then while her younger daughter hovered around the scene with the camera.
"Keep it turned driver. Little gas... that's too much. Is it in four wheel drive?"
"Uhm... doesn't look like it is."
"Put it in four-wheel. Alright, let's try again. Driver as hard as you can, tiny bit of gas. Keep it just above idle. There we go, that's what I like to see."
Creaking, groaning, winches whining, slow teetering and wiggling, until the Toyota's spinning left wheels made contact with the road again. The nose came around and very slowly up out of the ditch. The rear wanted to slide deeper into the ditch but was prevented from doing so by the winch line attached to the back and kept tight in tandem with the pulling on the front line. The left front wheel slipped and spun harder every now and then as Sonja gave small inputs with the accelerator, the right front wheel completely stationary but slowly going back into a normal position from its folded-under angle.
Slowly, gradually, with deft control, the Toyota 4Runner came further up out of the ditch and onto the road. Florence signaled her son to drive the pink Land Rover with the trailer a bit further up the road to give them more room. She kept manipulating the buttons on the large remote box, tightening the winch line running to the rear of the muddy white car, pulling on the line going to the front to bring it further out of the ditch, tightening the one going to the rear again to keep the pressure on it so the back of the car wouldn't slide back into the ditch. Constantly talking to her daughter behind the wheel of the Toyota, as well as to her son and her other daughter who were now both getting shots with a camera.
All in all, it took thirty-eight minutes before the Toyota 4Runner was sitting level on the muddy road. Slackening the winch lines, Florence disconnected the one attached to the back of the car and attached it to the driver's side front tow point. She lifted the boom on the back of the DAF truck to its highest point and started slowly pulling on both lines again, gradually lifting the front wheels of the Toyota off the ground.
"Alright Tom, time to shine," she smiled at her son. "I need you to back the trailer under it, completely straight, until you feel it bump against the back wheels, then go forward just enough to pull out the ramps."
"Consider it done, ma," the puma boy nodded, handing the small camera he was holding to his younger sister.
He got behind the wheel of the pink Land Rover again, driving back and forth a few times to get into the proper position to back the trailer under the muddy white Toyota. Florence lifted the front of it up a bit further, secured the winches and leaned under the car to pull out the ramps of the trailer once it was in the right position. Standing by the back of the DAF truck again, she motioned at Thomas to hold the brakes while nodding at Sonja behind the wheel of the 4Runner.
"Your turn, Sonja. Give her a little gas until you feel the rear tires climbing the ramps. No need to do any steering, you're off the ground so it will feel a bit weird. Just crawl her onto the trailer."
"Gotcha, mom," the puma girl nodded. "Should I leave it in four-low?"
"Just to be safe; yes," Florence nodded. "I'll keep you up with the winches, and don't worry about running into the lines. You'll have to push them forwards because of the position we're in."
Sonja nodded and held on to the steering wheel while she manipulated the brake and accelerator with both feet. Scraping and creaking, the muddy 4Runner slowly crawled up the ramps, bit by bit, ever more forwards very slowly at Florence's motioning with her free paw and coming to a stop when the puma woman balled her paw into a fist. She slowly let off on the winches so the front end of the white car sank down onto the trailer as well until it was fully sitting on the deck. While Florence undid the soft-shackles and pulled the winch lines back in, Thomas already started strapping down the Toyota while Sonja shut off the engine and the headlights, rolled the driver door window back up and got out of the car to help with strapping it down.
Once the car was strapped down, the straps were checked and the ramps were secured, Florence put the soft-shackles and the remote box into the storage boxes on the DAF truck and turned to the four others.
"Sonja, you're driving the LaRo back to the yard, and miss Sweeny will ride with you. You two, squeeze into the truck with me. Miss Sweeny, as I said, you can ride with my daughter, we'll go back to our yard and put your car on the lift to assess the damage and see if we can repair it. Sonja, give me some room to turn around and then lead the way."
"Thank you so much again, you have no idea how happy I am you got me out of this mess," the mouse woman smiled while the three young pumas got into the vehicles.
"That's what we're here for, honey," Florence smiled.
She climbed behind the wheel of the DAF truck after a last check at everything while the mouse woman got into the passenger's seat of the Land Rover, which drove forwards a few feet. Maneuvering the DAF truck around on the muddy road and across the ditch, Florence followed the Land Rover as it started making its way back up the muddy road with the Toyota 4Runner on the trailer. A little over an hour later, they had arrived in the mountain city of Rainbow Falls and pulled into the large yard of the Heavy Liftin' company. Florence parked the DAF truck off to the side in line with a number of other ancient-looking and heavily modified trucks, while the Land Rover pulled the trailer over to one of the two large buildings that held two large garage doors.
On the front wall of the building, between the two garage doors, was a thick coil of garden hose wrapped around an old rim. Florence pulled it out and turned on the spigot it was attached to so all of them could rinse the mud off their feet and lower legs. The Toyota 4Runner was hosed off as well, and with the help of a forklift driven by Thomas it was pulled into the building and between the posts of a car lift. Sonja swung the arms of the lift in place under the car and Florence lifted it up into the air so the damage to the front right wheel and suspension could be assessed.
The ball-joint in the lower control arm had sheared when the car slid into the ditch and bumped against the side of it, and the right front wheel getting pushed inwards had torn the rubber brake hose going to the brake caliper. Fortunately that was the only damage; the control arms were not bent, and even the tire had not blown or even popped off the bead. Checking an inventory on a computer sitting on a desk in a small office, Florence looked for replacement parts they might have in stock, but found only a replacement brake soft-line. A quick visit to the website of an O'Reilly store in the city secured them the proper ball-joint, and Florence had it overnight-shipped; however as it was the first of January, it would only be shipped the next day and arrive the day after that.
The mouse woman drooped a bit when Florence told her that.
"So I'm still stuck, then, but now I'm just stuck here. I don't suppose there's any car rental places open today, are there?"
"That would be a no," Florence confirmed.
"Great," the mouse woman said with a light sigh, shrugging a bit. "Well, guess I'll find a hotel then. Would it be a very big favor to ask if you could drop me off at a hotel? It's the first of January for you as well after all, I'm sure you want to get back home."
"Honey, we'll do you one better than that," Florence smiled, putting a paw on the mouse woman's shoulder and leading her out of the garage building, which was locked up behind them by Sonja as they walked over to a bright pink 1964 Plymouth Valiant station wagon. "We'll take you back home with us, and for tonight, tomorrow and tomorrow night, you will be our guest. And heck, if the part comes in a bit late and it takes a bit longer than we think to repair the damage, you'll be our guest for the whole day after tomorrow and the following night as well so you won't have to make that ridiculously long drive back to Canal City during the night."
"Oh my gosh, that... that is so generous of you!" the mouse woman said with a bit of a squeak. "Surely I couldn't impose like that?"
"Honey, I have an eight-bedroom house," Florence smiled. "That means me and the kids all have our own bedroom, there's a study, and three guestrooms. We do this all the time for out-of-towners; you're not the first and you certainly won't be the last." She opened the front passenger door of the pink station wagon. "Go on and get in, we'll get you installed nice and cozy in one of our guestrooms, you can have a warm shower, we'll run your clothes through the laundry, and we'll have spaghetti tonight for dinner."
The three young pumas cheered happily at that as they piled onto the backseat of the pink station wagon after having let the feral Dalmatian dog jump into the back of it. With a smile, and only a very light coaxing pressure of Florence's paw on her shoulder, the mouse woman got into the passenger's seat of the wagon, buckling up while Florence walked around the front of the car and got in behind the wheel to start the engine and drive off.
It was certainly an interesting start of the new year!
