the triplets had shopped and shopped some more. He's been ready to go an hour before they finally showed up at the car. Einar was like him. Happy to just stay home and work and play his fiddle. Torvald was happy as long as he had a book. But those girls.......always wanting something from the store.

Here, finally, was the bottom of Norwegian coulee. The mud was deeper here and the splash from the road had all but covered the headlights. Herman was glad they had stopped at the top of the draw and put the chains on. Herman kicked the T down to low pedal and made a good run for the place where water was coming over the road. Both ears down, the T giving it everything it had, they hit it like a fat girl heading for the donuts on the midnight smorgasboard lunch at The Annual Norwegian Sheepherders Ball. Herman had been crossing here for twenty years and knew there was a good gravel bottom once you dug down through the mud a little. They almost made it across. He kept his foot mashed down on the low pedal til the engine damn near died before he let up to let it catch its breath. The engine slobbered a little and then speeded up and he mashed the low pedal down again. He could feel the low band chatter on his left foot as the Ford tried as hard as it could to pull itself out of the mud hole but it couldn't budge itself. Holding the low pedal down in neutral with his left foot, he stabbed the reverse with his right a couple times but it wouldn't move. There was too much gravel in the bottom to let it spin and he knew if he kept trying it would burn out the low band and then Freida would have to get out so he and Einar could take the floor boards out and take up the low band before they could try again. She would be darned unhappy if she had to get out in the mud and stand there while he took up the band or even worse had to pull the inspection cover and put in a new band. He had one under the seat with new lining in it but even with the quick change ears it was a bugger to do in the barn at home let alone by lantern light in the middle of a mud hole. The boys got out without being told and splashed around to the back of the T and set their backs. He wound it up and gave the low band a quick stab with his left foot. If he could get it to spin and not kill the engine it would be all right. Stuck tighter than a nickel in a preacher's pocket!! "Got Damn Ford!!!" he cursed. "Got Damn Ford, Got Damn Ford," the triplets chorused in unison. Freida sat and stared straight ahead and didn't say a word but he knew what she was thinking. She didn't have to say it. She had been there when the Ford man had told them about the new Ruckstell rearends that gave a Ford FOUR SPEEDS INSTEAD OF TWO. "Pull any hill without going to low pedal," that's what the Ford man had said. "Take on any mud hole or any hill and never power out with a Ruckstell." "Just shift it in low and go!" But it was another seventy-five dollars on top of the cost of the Ford and the sedan was already over two hundred more than the touring so he had said they would get along fine without it. The Ford man should have told him it wouldn't have power enough to pull itself with that heavy sedan body and all those kids and Freida loaded in it. Freida had said they should get it. He had said he would try the Ford without it and if he thought they needed it he would get it later. He didn't say it to Freida, but he'd thought, "I'll keep that seventy-five dollars toward a new Ford truck, I don't need a Ruckstell." Now, cursed to himself, "Damn!!!! I should have got that Ruckstell!!" Here they sat. If he had to get Freida out in the mud and have her push and get her dress all dirty and her and the girls in mud up to their knees there would never be a new baby in their house again. He'd be sleeping in the barn the rest of his life. "Damn, I wish I'd have bought that Ruckstell," he said to himself again. To the girls he said, "Get out and help your brothers push." They both gave him a look that would have cowed a lesser man but they knew better to argue with Herman when he was in a mood like this one. The girls slogged their way around the back.