Puebla de Hijar Incident
40 years after leaving Spain, my sister and I returned to visit our newly born nephew, Isaac, an 8-pound 4-ounce bundle of crying baby!
We decided that we would use this trip to do a bit of ancestry work as well as visit some of the cemeteries in the counties that our people came from. Why not snap a few pictures of their headstones?
After a great visit with family, we hopped in a car drove to the outskirts of Zaragoza to some of the smaller towns in the province of Teruel (Zaragoza is made up of three smaller provinces, Zaragoza, Huesca - to the north and Teruel - to the south of Zaragoza). We drove toward the towns of Ejulve, Hijar, Puebla de Hijar, Sastago, and others.
Puebla de Hijar Church in a State of Arrested Decay
We wanted to see what they were all about and to visit the local cemeteries in search of ancestors that were buried and to take pictures of the towns before they are lost to history.
As were making our way to the very small town of Puebla de Hijar, we spotted an old church that was in a state of arrested decay. We figured that it was most likely a spot where some of our relatives walked about and prayed, so we decided to take the dirt road to get closer to the church. We were able to drive right up to the back door of the church, did a bit of exploring and then decided to make our way to the next town on our list of sights to see.
As my sister backed away from the church, she inadvertently backed the car into an irrigation canal and we were stuck! The back two tires had completely sunk into the canal and the bottom back end of the car was resting on the “lip” of the canal.
We tried everything to get out of the ditch, but the wheels just spun and we had no traction at all.
We both got out of the car and each of us tried to push it while the other tried to shift the gears to see if we could make any progress… We couldn’t!
Ultimately, we decided that we might be able to lift the car up a bit using the tire jack, at least high enough for the wheels to get some traction on the canal wall, so we both got out and started to jack the car up. Every time we were able to get it up a few inches we placed a large stone underneath the frame of the car and continued in this vane as the day was starting to get late and turn to dusk.
As we were gathering stones and continued jacking the car up, we heard the whine and putt-putt of a small car/motorcycle coming down the road. As it approached, a smallish man of the area got out and asked the obvious question of “are you stuck?” He was clearly a man of the fields, a “campesino” as they are known. He got out of his little car and started to help us place rocks under the tires and helped us push the car out of the canal.
The car finally got traction and spun out of the canal. The “campesino” clapped his hands and said “bueno!” or “good!”. We thanked him and offered to pay him for his time, but he refused and, as quickly as he showed up, he disappeared into the fields.
Small town citizens are practical and very helpful, they will give you the shirt off their backs and not expect anything in return, well, maybe a beer next time you run into them at the local bar!
