TumbleDweeeb

Episode 4: Moses, Glenn, and the Miracle at Bear Lake
*Written by: Emmitt Owens*
*As narrated by Waylon*

Waylon, Intro: Well now, folks, let me tell you about the Sunday when the boys at Mad Mechanics discovered that sometimes the best car finds come from the most unexpected places – including the bottom of Bear Lake and the wisdom of an old man who seemed to know where every abandoned automobile in Alabama had come to rest.

   It was a crisp October Sunday morning when Chester announced that they were all going to church at Resting Oak Baptist Church of Buzzard Roost, Alabama. Now, this wasn’t entirely voluntary – Stephanie Davis had mentioned the week before that she’d be singing in the choir, and suddenly everyone had developed a powerful need for spiritual guidance.
   The little white church sat on a hill overlooking the town, its steeple pointing toward heaven like a mechanical lift reaching for the sky. Inside, the wooden pews creaked under the weight of folks who spent six days a week working hard and one day a week trying to remember why they were working so hard in the first place.
   Stephanie sat in the choir loft wearing a Sunday dress that could’ve stopped traffic on the interstate, her blonde hair catching the morning light streaming through the stained glass windows. The boys had strategically positioned themselves in the third pew where they had a clear view of the choir, though this proved to be a tactical error in terms of actually paying attention to the service.
   Pastor Williams was delivering a sermon about Moses and the parting of the Red Sea from Exodus chapter 14. His voice carried the authority of a man who knew his Scripture and wasn’t afraid to use it.
       “Now friends,” Pastor Williams declared, his voice echoing off the rafters, “when Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. The children of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, and the waters were a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.”
   Chester tried to nod along thoughtfully, but kept glancing up at Stephanie in the choir loft, losing track of whether Moses was parting waters or building arks. During the offering, Chester reached for his wallet and accidentally pulled out a wrench instead, dropping it with a loud clang that echoed through the sanctuary. He spent the next five minutes trying to look like he’d done it on purpose while Mrs. Henderson glared at him from two pews over.
   Gary was genuinely attempting to listen, but when Stephanie smiled and gave a little wave to the congregation, he forgot what verse they were on and started reading from Psalms instead. The Professor was taking notes with precision, though they seemed to focus more on the acoustics of Stephanie’s voice during the hymns than the theological implications of the sermon. At one point, the Professor stood up during a quiet prayer to get a better angle for calculating the sound reflection patterns of Stephanie’s voice off the church rafters, earning confused stares from half the congregation before Gary yanked him back down into the pew.
   Reedus was fighting every instinct to make puns about “parting ways” with problems, mainly because he was too distracted by Stephanie’s presence to think of any good ones. Gutglor was thinking about how Moses would’ve made a good moonshine runner, but also wondering if Stephanie might like to sample his latest batch after service.
       “And when Pharaoh’s army pursued them into the midst of the sea,” Pastor Williams continued, “Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its normal flow when the morning appeared. So the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea, and the waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen, even Pharaoh’s entire army that had gone into the sea after them; not even one of them remained.”
   That’s when an old man in the back pew stood up and walked toward the door, his long white hair flowing like a biblical patriarch and his beard reaching nearly to his belt. He wore a weathered trench coat that had seen more miles than most automobiles, and he leaned heavily on a gnarled walking stick that looked like it had been carved from ancient oak.
   As he passed their pew, the old man paused and whispered to Chester, “Y’all boys work on cars, don’t you?”
   Chester nodded, and the old man’s eyes twinkled with the kind of mischief that suggested he knew something nobody else did.
       “Name’s Glenn,” he whispered, his voice carrying the sound of someone who’d seen more automotive history than most museums. “Got something y’all might be interested in. Meet me outside after service.”
   After Pastor Williams finished with the benediction and Stephanie had sung “Amazing Grace” with a voice that could make angels weep – and had definitely made Gary drop his hymnal twice and Chester forget to stand up during the final verse – the boys filed out of the church to find Glenn waiting by an old oak tree, looking like a prophet who’d specialized in automotive revelations.
       “Beautiful service,” Stephanie said, appearing beside them like sunshine in a Sunday dress. “Y’all looked real attentive during the sermon.”
     “Oh yes,” Gary replied, his voice cracking slightly. “Very… educational. Learned a lot about… Moses and… water.”
       “Waters,” Chester corrected, trying to regain his composure. “Multiple waters. He parted them. The waters.”
   Stephanie smiled that smile that could melt engine blocks. “Well, I better get going. See y’all around!” She walked toward her car, leaving behind the faint scent of perfume and the sound of four grown men trying to remember how to breathe normally.

Intermission: “Now don’t go thinking these boys ain’t genuine churchgoers just ’cause they get distracted by Stephanie Davis. Down here in Alabama, when God blesses a congregation with a woman that beautiful, well, that’s what we call a divine distraction. These boys have been in them pews every Sunday since before their feet could touch the floor – they came for church, they just happen to appreciate the Lord’s finer handiwork while they’re there.”

       “Boys,” Glenn announced without preamble, apparently unaffected by the Stephanie situation, “there’s a 1954 Dodge Royal sitting at the bottom of Bear Lake, about three miles north of here. Been there since 1967 when old Charlie Johnson drove it off a ledge during an ice storm.”
   The Professor adjusted his spectacles. “A submerged vehicle after that length of time would likely suffer extensive corrosion and water damage.”
       “Not this one,” Glenn replied with the confidence of a man who’d never been wrong about such things. “Charlie drove her into about eight feet of water in a spring-fed lake. Cold water, low oxygen, lots of silt. She’s been preserved like the pharaoh’s tomb, just waiting for someone with the right combination of faith and foolishness to bring her back to the surface.”
   Reedus’s eyes lit up like a jack-o’-lantern. “A car in a lake? That’s what I call a deep-sea fishing expedition! We’re gonna need to dive right into this project!”
       “How do you know about this car?” Chester asked, his natural skepticism warring with his automotive curiosity.
   Glenn smiled, his weathered face creasing like an old map. “Son, I’ve been finding lost cars longer than you’ve been fixing them. Some folks collect stamps, I collect stories about automobiles that have ended up in interesting places. This Dodge has been calling to me for thirty years.”
   Gary scratched his head. “What makes you think we can get it out?”
       “Because,” Glenn replied, pointing his walking stick toward the lake, “Moses showed us that water doesn’t have to be a permanent barrier. Sometimes you just need the right approach and a little faith.”
   Within an hour, they were standing on the shore of Bear Lake, looking out at water so clear you could see fish swimming twenty feet down. The lake was fed by natural springs and surrounded by pine trees that had been growing since before the Civil War.
   Gutglor had returned to the shop and retrieved what he generously called “scuba gear” but which looked more like a collection of garden hoses, an old diving helmet from a maritime salvage yard, and enough duct tape to repair a submarine.
       “I’ve been saving this equipment for just such an occasion,” Gutglor announced proudly, strapping on the helmet that made him look like a very optimistic deep-sea explorer.
     “Gutglor,” the Professor said carefully, “that diving apparatus appears to be from approximately 1940 and may not meet modern safety standards.”
        “Safety’s overrated,” Gutglor replied, his voice echoing inside the helmet. “Adventure’s underrated.”
   Meanwhile, Reedus was assembling what could generously be called a “vehicle extraction system” but looked more like something designed by someone who’d learned engineering from comic books and fever dreams.
       “The way I see it,” Reedus explained, connecting chains to pulleys to ropes to what appeared to be the axle from an old farm tractor, “we’re looking at a real sink-or-swim situation here. This car’s really gone off the deep end!”
     “Please stop,” Gary begged. “We haven’t even found the car yet and you’re already drowning us in puns.”
       “Can’t help it,” Reedus replied cheerfully. “This whole situation has got me hooked! We’re really going to make a splash with this recovery!”
   The Professor had pulled out his ever-present notebook and was calculating water displacement, buoyancy factors, and the structural integrity of a vehicle that had been submerged for over fifty years.
       “According to my calculations,” the Professor announced, “if we can attach flotation devices to the vehicle and gradually displace the water inside the passenger compartment, we should be able to achieve neutral buoyancy and guide it to shallow water.”
   Chester and Gary exchanged looks that communicated their amazement that the Professor could make even underwater car recovery sound like a doctoral thesis.
       “Or,” Chester suggested, “we could just hook some chains to it and pull it out with the tow truck.”
     “Where’s the science in that?” the Professor protested.
   Glenn had wandered to the edge of the lake and was pointing his walking stick toward a spot about fifty yards from shore. “She’s right there,” he announced with the certainty of a man who could see through eight feet of water and thirty years of silt.
   Gutglor waded into the lake wearing his improvised diving gear, looking like a cross between Jacques Cousteau and a very optimistic plumber. The Professor had rigged up what he called a “communications system” but which looked suspiciously like two tin cans connected by fishing line.
       “Testing, testing,” Gutglor’s voice echoed from the depths, distorted by water and antiquated equipment. “I can see the bottom, and boys, Glenn wasn’t lying. There’s definitely something down here that looks like it used to be a car.”
   Through the clear water, they could make out the ghostly outline of the 1954 Dodge Royal, sitting upright on the lake bottom like it was waiting for a parking meter to expire. The car was covered in a thin layer of silt, but the basic shape was intact.
       “Well, I’ll be bullet hole’d barnwood,” Chester muttered. “It’s really down there.”
     “Of course it is,” Glenn replied calmly. “I told you it was. Sometimes you just have to have faith in things you can’t see from the surface.”
   Reedus had finished assembling his extraction contraption, which now resembled something that belonged in either the U.S. Navy or a scrapyard, depending on your perspective. The system involved pulleys, chains, flotation devices made from empty oil drums, and enough mechanical ingenuity to impress Richard Rawlings on Red Bull and moonshine.
       “This is going to be a water-tight operation!” Reedus declared, testing his pulley system. “We’re really going to turn the tide on this recovery!”
     “I’m going to throw you in that lake if you don’t stop with them damned water puns,” Gary warned.
    “Don’t be so shallow,” Reedus replied. “I’m just trying to keep things fluid!”
   The Professor had calculated the exact positioning needed for optimal extraction angles, while Chester and Gary prepared the chains and cables that would actually do the heavy lifting. Glenn stood on the shore like an automotive oracle, occasionally offering advice that seemed to come from decades of experience with impossible car recoveries.
       “The trick,” Glenn explained, “is to work with the water instead of against it. Let the lake help you instead of fighting it.”
   After two hours of preparation, they were ready for the actual extraction. Gutglor had successfully attached flotation devices to the Dodge’s bumpers, the Professor’s calculations had been triple-checked, and Reedus’s contraption was ready to either extract the car or provide entertainment for future generations of mechanical archaeologists.
       “Moment of truth,” Chester announced, engaging the tow truck’s winch.
   Slowly, incredibly, the ghostly outline of the 1954 Dodge Royal began to rise from the lake bottom. Water poured from every opening as the car emerged like a mechanical resurrection, dripping lake water and thirty years of accumulated silt.
       “She’s coming up!” Gutglor’s voice echoed from his diving helmet. “And boys, she’s more beautiful than a mermaid riding a seahorse!”
   The car broke the surface with all the drama of a submarine surfacing, water cascading from its windows and doors like automotive waterfalls. Despite three decades underwater, the basic structure was intact, preserved by the cold, oxygen-poor environment exactly as Glenn had predicted.
       “Holy horsepower,” Gary breathed, watching the Dodge emerge from its watery tomb. “It’s actually in one piece.”
     “Told you,” Glenn replied simply. “Sometimes the most impossible things are just waiting for the right people to believe they’re possible.”

Intermission: “Now I know some of y’all are thinking this sounds more like a Bible story than a car recovery, and maybe that’s exactly the point. Sometimes when faith meets determination and a little mechanical know-how, ordinary folks find themselves part of something that feels bigger than just pulling a rusty Dodge out of a lake. Moses had his staff and the Red Sea – these boys had Gutglor’s diving gear and Bear Lake.”

   As they guided the dripping Dodge toward shore, Reedus couldn’t contain his excitement. “This is what I call a deep-water recovery! We really pully’d this one out of the depths! Talk about making waves in the automotive world!”
       “Reedus,” Chester warned, “if you make one more water pun, we’re putting you back in that damn’d lake.”
     “Sorry,” Reedus replied, grinning like a man who’d just discovered buried treasure. “I’m just all washed up with excitement!”
   Once they had the Dodge safely on shore, everyone gathered around to examine their miraculous recovery. The car was complete, from its distinctive chrome grille to its whitewall tires, all preserved by decades of underwater storage.
       “Glenn,” the Professor said, his voice full of wonder, “how did you know this would work?”
   The old man smiled, his weathered face reflecting a lifetime of faith in impossible things. “Son, I learned a long time ago that sometimes the best treasures are the ones that seem completely lost. Moses showed the Israelites that even the sea could become a pathway when you have faith and the right guidance.”
        “What happens now?” Gary asked, running his hand along the Dodge’s surprisingly intact chrome.
     “Now,” Glenn replied, “you boys get to bring this beauty back to life. She’s been waiting almost sixty years for mechanics who could appreciate what she used to be and believe in what she could become again.”
   As they loaded the dripping Dodge onto the trailer for the trip back to Mad Mechanics, everyone felt like they’d been part of something larger than a simple car recovery. They’d witnessed what happened when faith, determination, and mechanical ingenuity combined to make the impossible merely improbable.
       “Boys,” Chester announced as they prepared to head back to the shop, “I think we just learned something about miracles.”
     “What’s that?” Gary asked.
       “Sometimes they look like old cars at the bottom of lakes, and sometimes they look like old men who know where to find them.”
   Glenn tipped his hat and walked away, his trench coat flowing behind him and his walking stick marking time against the gravel road. He disappeared around the bend like an automotive prophet who’d delivered his message and moved on to the next impossible car recovery.
   As they drove back toward Buzzard Roost with their miraculous find secured on the trailer, the radio crackled to life with Johnny Cash singing “Peace in the Valley,” and everyone agreed it was the perfect soundtrack for a day when faith had moved more than mountains – it had moved a 1954 Dodge Royal from the bottom of Bear Lake to the beginning of a new automotive adventure.
   And so another extraordinary day came to an end at Mad Mechanics, leaving behind the kind of story that would be told and retold until it became legend, and a 1954 Dodge Royal that would soon purr with new life thanks to a combination of ancient faith and modern mechanical magic.
   Back at the shop, as the sun was setting over Buzzard Roost and casting long shadows across the yard full of automotive dreams, the boys stood around the dripping 1954 Dodge Royal like pilgrims around a sacred relic.
   Chester removed his baseball cap and looked around at his friends – Gary with grease still under his fingernails, the Professor with his notebook full of calculations, Reedus grinning like a man who’d just lived through his own punchline, and Gutglor still smelling faintly of lake water and adventure.
       “Boys,” Chester said quietly, “I think we ought to say a word of thanks.”
   They formed a loose circle around the Dodge, each man removing his hat in the fading Alabama light. Chester cleared his throat and began:
       “Lord, we thank You for this day and for showing us that miracles come in all kinds of packages – sometimes they look like old cars at the bottom of lakes, and sometimes they look like wise old men who know where to find them. We’re grateful for Glenn’s guidance, for safe travels on the water, and for friends who’ll follow you into impossible situations with nothing but faith and mechanical ingenuity.”
     “Amen to that,” Gary added softly.
       “And Lord,” the Professor continued, surprising everyone with his reverence, “we thank You for the science and the mystery, for the calculations that work and the miracles that don’t need explaining.”
     “Bless this old Dodge,” Gutglor chimed in, “and help us bring her back to life the way You’ve brought new life to all of us through friendship and shared adventures.”
        “And Lord,” Reedus said, his voice unusually serious, “help us remember that sometimes the best discoveries happen when we dive deep into faith, even when the water looks too dark to see the bottom.”
   Chester nodded and concluded, “We ask Your blessing on our work, our friendships, and all the impossible things still waiting to be discovered. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
       “Amen,” they said together, their voices carrying across the evening air like a benediction over every rusted dream and restored hope in the Mad Mechanics yard.
   As the first stars appeared over Alabama, the 1954 Dodge Royal sat waiting for its resurrection, blessed by both lake water and prayer, ready to become another testament to the power of faith, friendship, and the kind of mechanical miracles that happen when good men refuse to believe that anything is truly beyond saving.

Outro: “Now that there, folks, is what I call a genuine miracle. Sometimes the most impossible recoveries happen when you combine a little faith with a lot of determination and the wisdom of someone who’s spent a lifetime knowing that the best treasures are usually hidden in the most unlikely places. And if you ever think something’s too far gone to save, well, just remember that Moses parted the Red Sea with nothing but faith and a walking stick – so maybe that rusty old car in your backyard ain’t as hopeless as you think.”