Cow Tipper Rescues Boat Flipper

It's Labor Day weekend and I am traveling north with my in-laws to spend some time up at the lake house. Everyone will be there. Cousins in college are traveling from out of state, father-in-law is leaving the farm, and the city cousins are carving out some time between business trips and fall sports meets.  On the road we get a phone call from my niece who has arrived at the lake first and is taking the boat out for its first run.
Over the next hour a series of phone calls from her unfold the drama. The boat dies, in the middle of the lake, and someone has to swim ashore. A stranger with a pontoon boat comes and gives them a tow in to dock. The boat is put up on the trailer to be taken into town.

Everyone is hoping that it is simply out of gas.  It is hard to imagine a family vacation without "Old Blue".  She has been pulling three generations of water skiers and has been known to make little tubers take air.  Every year she needs a little maintenance, but has kept going for over 30 years.
The next phone call was "just to let us know", that there had been an accident and the boat had come off the trailer. I had visions of a boat flying through the air, taking out everything in its path.  We were surprised to find it sitting, relatively unharmed, on the side of the road. The nearest resident had come out to help and they were just deciding what to do next.
Normally this sort of "accident" would send me into a downward spiral of gloom and doom, certain that this is the end... there is no fix.  But I have come to understand that this is not normal.  There are people who simply get on and do whatever needs to be done.

 It wasn't long before another vehicle stopped.  The driver came to help and immediately took charge. They were able to jack up the front of the boat and winch it back on to the trailer.  The whole thing took less than 10 minutes. The boat was rescued even before a neighbor could arrive with his skid-loader.  There wasn't even time to lay blame!
I learned a bit more of our rescuer after noticing his truck was towing an unusual device that I had never seen before. My brother in brother-in-law said, "Oh, that's a cow tipper." A what? Why would you want to tip cows? Apparently they need to be tipped so their hooves can be trimmed. Don't ask me why their hooves need trimming. Only farmers know this stuff! 
And it turns out our boat driver's sister went to college with the good samaritan/hoof trimmer. More surprising was finding out that you need a college degree to be a cow tipper. We thanked him and the various vehicles dispersed as quickly as they had arrived. Old Blue had survived to power through

the water another day.  And as I write this on the deck, I can watch her pulling a skier round the lake.
I am continually impressed with both the Minnesotan "can do" attitude and their kindness to strangers. This is not the first boat accident I have been involved in. Jon and I had to be rescued in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, when our sailboat was grounded on an island beach. And on another voyage we were rescued twice: once by German sailors, and then by Greek fisherman. Each disaster was extremely stressful, and we paid them back as best we could, with whatever we had onboard.

I have also been stranded on the road in Bulgaria and Croatia, and many times as a child in the interior of Brazil. Each time I had the feeling that I was completely on my own, with no one to help me out of the situation. That turned out not to be true as I eventually found some one who took pity on me and then charged me an arm and a leg for parts and their time.
Here I get the feeling everyone is just waiting for an opportunity to help out a neighbor or stranger. Sometimes it is hard to find a stranger, as most people are connected in some way. He was a college roommate, they played ball together, our kids dated, he worked on the farm, her kids rent land from us. And if there isn't a connection, we make one, while pulling together to stay out of trouble.