The “Final Trip” gathering to remember Clarence A. Barnes III will be held on Saturday, Nov. 21 starting at 4 p.m. at the Ag Hall in West Tisbury. Bring a potluck and Trip stories to share.
It was postponed from back in September due to stormy weather. I’m sure that as well as you might have known Trip, new information will be revealed on Saturday from unexpected sources. You need not doubt any of them. As I mentioned before, when it comes to Trip stories, he lived a life of “you don’t need to make this stuff up!” I’ll be away on a previously planned journey with my Mrs. to the southwest, but I’ve had my opportunity to tell a couple of Trip stories here already. Hers’s another one.
Way back when the Schifter house got moved, Trip was hired to haul the big beams back to the Ferry Point to get loaded on the barge with all of the other paraphernalia used in that project. Two empty flat bed tractor trailers were at the point one evening when I was getting off of a shift driving the ferry. Trip had just come across on foot from town. He asked if I would like to take a ride out to Wasque. I said sure. We walked toward one of the gigantic semi cabs. He started to climb up on the driver’s side and I headed around to the passenger side. He pointed at the other gigantic semi and said, “Why don’t you bring that one? We’ll have time to talk on the way back together.”
I had driven some pretty large manual transmission fire trucks but never anything pulling a 53-foot-long trailer. This monster had 18 tires. He didn’t ask if I even knew how to drive a stick. He did say that I need not worry about the rear split since there was no weight on the trailer. I was aware of the gizmo called a split differential, but had never worried about it before now. He also pointed out that I didn’t need to wait for the air pressure alarm to go off to get going as I would have plenty of pressure by the time I got to Mrs. Potter’s. That’s the sharp right hand turn in the pavement at the beginning of the Dike Road.
He started up his rig and I eventually got mine running and the air brakes off. Back then there were still concrete bumpers running up the center of the parking lot. As I hatched a plan to get around them, Trip headed right for them. He went over them at an angle. I could see his head bouncing around in the cab as one at a time and then in pairs, the tires shrugged their way up and over. Now that there was more room, I drove around them.
The trip to Wasque was slow going for me. I think that I only used 3 of the dozen gears available. I had to come to a complete stop at the turn at Mrs. Potter’s in order to downshift into a lower gear after slowing to a crawl to negotiate the turn. When I got to the house moving site, Trip offered to back it up for me with the polite comment that reverse was tricky in that truck. He must have seen my hands shaking.
To get back to the ferry, we hopped in a green pickup with his name painted on the side. It wouldn’t start. Dead battery. No problem. We switched to another pickup with his name on the side. I’ve learned that wherever Trip went, there was always a surplus of vehicles with his name on them at the end. Sadly, we are witnessing the end of an era.