Emma, who was busy sorting the bills out of the huge stack of mail, just sighed.

"Carl, I don't think we need any more magazines. You must get 20 different ones each month as it is. Please don't order any more!"

Carl scratched one of his chins thoughtfully. "Hmmm. Lemmee see. I get Guns & Ammo, Dirt Bike, Field and Stream, Hot Rod, Super Chevy, Playboy, Soldier of Fortune, Combat Crotch and ..."

Emma looked up, somewhat startled. "Combat Crotch! What in the world kind of magazine is that?"

Carl looked a bit sheepish. "Well, it's a combination gun and girly book. They got pictures and information on all the new guns, and all the guns are being displayed by good looking girls in skimpy bathing suits. It was originally called Play-Gun, but I think the people at Playboy sued them or something."

Emma mumbled something under her breath and got back to sorting out the bills.

Carl shuffled through the pile of mail and let out a whoop of delight! "Hot doggy! Emma, here's four issues of magazines that I ain't seen yet. They finally caught up with me. Wow, this one goes all the way back to April!"

Carl pushed the balance of the mail off to one side and started thumbing through the magazine. "Hey, Emma, check this out. These guys have a funny story in here about how to get stuck. Sort of an April Fools kind of thing. And they got a whole bunch of pitchers of trucks and Jeeps stuck in the mud, and in rivers, and ... whoa ...lookit this one! It's upside down in a lake with just the wheels stickin' out of the water."

Emma glanced at the outrageous photos over Carl's shoulder, and was soon giggling and pointing at the unfortunate souls captured forever in print in truly awkward circumstances. "Ohhh, Carl ... look! The magazine will pay you $50 if they use one of your stuck photos. We ought to go out to where some 4x4 people are having a play day, and see if we can get some stuck-in-the-mud photos? Plus, I think it would be great to have my name in print."

"Your name? Hey, woman, just who is the pornographer in this family, anyways? Me or you?"

"You mean photographer, don't you?"

"That's what I said. You got wax in your ears, Emma? But that's not important. What is important is that if we work this right, we could make us some good money."

"But we're going to have to hope we can find someone who just got stuck. That might not be easy."

Carl let out an evil grin. "It might not be as hard as you think. All we got to do is stage our own personal stuck situation."

Emma let out a small gasp. "Carl! Why ... why ... that would almost be like cheating!"

"Nonsense. Tell you what. I'll get The Whale stuck, you take the picture, we send it in to the magazine and we split the money. Deal?"

Emma thought for a long moment. "Only if you really get stuck. I don't want to be part of any conspiracy."

"Jeez! OK, you got a deal. I'll get stuck, and then get un-stuck. You take the picture. Now let's go find us a nice little mud-hole that's worth a fast fifty bucks."

***

A half-hour later, Carl found a two track road with some standing water in a dip in the road. "This looks good. The ruts leading in and out of the water are deep and soft looking. There's been a coupla 4-bys through here lately."

Emma looked puzzled. "Carl, what are you going to do if you get stuck? How are you going to get out?"

"No sweat. I'll just blast through the water on that road in two-wheel drive until I get bogged down real good. Then I'll put it in four-wheel drive and merely drive out. Now you just get over by that tree, make sure you got film in that camera, and keep the sun to your back to keep glare off the lens."

Emma took a lawn chair with her and got situated in a good spot. Carl checked The Whale over carefully and made sure that nothing was loose inside, then fired it up and rumbled down the muddy two-track road toward the wet spot.

The huge Suburban easily blasted through the depression and wads of mud were flung off to the rear, as the big rear tires spun wildly.

Carl turned around, and ripped through from the other direction. After a half-dozen passes, the mud started getting nicely churned up, and Carl was forced to drop down a gear to maintain the engine rpms.

By the 20th pass, the ruts were almost as deep as the tires and Carl was forced to really hammer the throttle hard to get through the muck. During the 26th run through the dip, The Whale came to a shuddering halt, and the rear tires spun uselessly and the entire chassis high-centered.

Carl leaned out the window and yelled. "Hey, Emma! Now take a couple of shots while I spin the rear wheels some more and really fling some mud."

She clicked happily away as Carl listened to the tires literally squeal as they spun in the mud. Then he leaned out the window again toward Emma. "OK, if you got enough shots, just nod your head and I'll get out of here."

Emma nodded and Carl slipped it into Four-Low, checked to see if the hub-lock light was on, and stepped on the gas. All four wheels spun and The Whale went absolutely nowhere. Carl tried the old rock-it-back-and-forth technique, going from reverse to low, reverse to low, and so forth.

Nothing.

Emma yelled at Carl from the lawn chair. "Alright, dear. I have plenty of pictures. You can drive out now."

Carl let out a string of vile Navy curses, and realized that he was well and truly stuck. So he got out of the cab, stepped into the slimy mud, sunk up to his knees immediately, then struggled around to the front bumper where the winch was mounted.

Ten minutes later, he had the winch cable end out of the mud, the winch in neutral, and started walking the winch to the closest tree about 40 feet away. Carl put a flat strap around the tree to protect the bark, then hooked the winch cable to the metal strap eye hook.

He got back inside The Whale, fired up the engine, put the Suburban into gear, then engaged the remote winch switch control. The big spool slowly turned and the cable grew taut in front of The Whale, as Carl floored the throttle. Mud flew everywhere and the chassis shuddered. Carl couldn't see anything as mud and slop filled the air.

A minute later, there was a dull heavy thunking sound, and the winch ground to a halt. Carl shut everything down, and got out of the cab to check things.

What he saw nearly yanked his eyeballs out! The tree had apparently been a rotten one, and had pulled out of the soil and been dragged until it was tightly wedged into the winch, roots and all. And this was no small tree; being about 18 inches thick and 20 feet long.

Carl put the winch handle into reverse and tried to back the cable out. No such luck; the tree was wedged heavily into the front part and the roots were wound into the cable on the spool. It was an ugly situation at best.

Emma came over and studied the situation. "My, it looks like you have a tree stuck in there. At least we'll be set for fire wood this winter. Now what?"

"No problem. There was a gas station a few miles back on the road in to here. I saw a tow truck there. All I need to do is contact them with my CB or my FM business-band radio, and we're outa here."

Carl fiddled with both radios, and after about ten minutes of scanning, picked up a conversation from the tow truck operator, told him about the problem and gave him directions.

***

A half hour later, the tow truck arrived and the operator argued with Carl over money for a while. After reluctantly agreeing to fork over $100, Carl stood back and watched as the operator went about his business.

The huge spool on the tow truck ground slowly and the thick cable grew straight as the winch motor roared. A horrible squealing sound filled the air, as the tow truck was pulled forward until it was almost touching The Whale, then a loud bang came from the back of the tow truck.

The operator ran to the back of the tow truck and did a quick inspection. "Well, guess I can write this piece of equipment off. The sprags are sheared right off. What does that damned Suburban of yours weigh, anyways?"

"Oh, somewhere over 10,000 pounds, if you count all the stuff inside, plus the boat on the roof, the two dirt bikes on the bumper racks, and of course, there's the satellite dish and the three 60 gallon gas tanks and ..."

"Hey, never mind, pal. Whatever that lump weighs, it was enough to break my gear and get me stuck, too. I'm gonna have to call my buddy Kenny and have him bring his D-4 Cat out here. Let me get on my radio and see if I can shake him up."

***

An hour later, Kenny showed up with the Cat on the back of a flat-bed trailer. He hooked up a chain to the tow truck, but just as the tow truck was starting to move out of the mud, the Cat flipped a tread and spun around in a lazy circle, burying the damaged side deeply in the mud.

After more frantic radio calls, a larger Cat pulled up and surveyed the scene. A big bearded guy got out of his truck, looked the scene over and laughed loudly. "Looks like I'm gonna make me $650 here."

Carl, the tow truck operator, and Kenny looked at the Cat driver and almost in unison asked him just how he figured that out?

The big bearded guy scratched his big beard. "Well, I figure $200 to get that baby Cat out of the mud. Two hundred more to get the tow truck free, and another two hundred to get that big dumb-looking Suburban out."

Carl counted on his fingers for a moment. "Wait a minute! that only comes to $600. How do you come up with a $650 figure?"

"Easy. I'm gonna get my camera out and take a shot of this dumb situation for one of those stuck photos in a magazine. That's worth an easy $50, for sure!"