After church we drove around the town for a bit. We will not go back to La Venta. Seven weeks after Ricardo's baptism, La Venta will officially be part of the new Villahermosa Mission. So, we drove around a little. We ended up driving down a narrow dirt road in a backside of town neighborhood. I could see the end of the road and it looked like a good place to turn around. We passed four guys sitting in the shade of a mango tree doing not much. I turned and waved at them. About 10 yards after about 10 feet of waving and not watching where I was going, the van came to a sudden stop in an unseen ditch. The front wheels were deep into it and we were stuck up to the axles. I tried to go forward and back, but it just sat there and spun. I like front-wheel drive, but the sewer mud was way too slick. Oh, I guess I forgot to mention. . . . The unseen ditch was an open sewer running from the house on our right to a larger open sewer in the left. We were buried up to the front axle in an open and very slowly almost-not-flowing gray-water and mud sewer. That really stinks.


So, I got out and walked the 40 feet or so back to the now broadly smiling Mexican guys who were now my new best amigos. Of course, they consented to help. They all went to the front of the minivan. Two of the guys were quite large. They tried to lift and push the van upwards and backwards while I tried not to spray gray sewer mud and water on them. That didn't work.


The senior statesman of the group hollered at the two teenagers to get ropes and he sauntered back to his yard where he had parked his big white dump truck. The boys eagerly crawled under the back of the van and tied the ship anchor-sized rope to the rear axle. The other larger, older adult went back to the shade of the mango tree and sat back down to watch the fun. The boys hooked the other end of the rope to the front of the diesel dump truck which was put into reverse and he, the large senior statesman neatly fished us out of that stinkin' crick.


We took their photo. We are grateful the larger fellows put on their shirts for the picture. We offered them some money for their trouble and with one slight, persuasive tweak of the arm, they took it. We were glad. Then, we left La Venta and drove home to Veracruz.