"Tire"d

Yesterday, I sort of wore myself out working on a flat tire. It wasn't a tire on our car; it was a flat tire on Jerome Holland's old Volkswagon.. He actually had a flat on the right rear, and a slow leak on the left rear tire. I arrived at his place on Ledgewood Heights in Brattleboro with an old can of "Puncture Repair" (which I had had sitting around for decades and didn't have much faith in) and my old air pump which runs off the cigarette lighter. It looks broken but actually works ok. I thought we could jack up the wheel, try the puncture repair and then see if it would hold any air. The jack that came with the VW was unlike any jack I had ever seen. I couldn't even figure out which way was up! So I used my Subaru jack, which is a common jack. It worked fine, but the effort required to operate it involved bending over and stooping a lot, and that was hard on my knees. Jerome could help a bit but he can expend very little effort before he has trouble breathing, so I did most of it. I got the tire up off the ground and tried the puncture repair can. I shook it vigorously, and there was some liquid in it, but when I stuck it on the tire valve, nothing happened. Either it was so old there was no propellant left in it, or I wasn't able to get it on to the tire valve far enough to trigger the valve inside the neck of the can. In any case, it was useless. So I suggested we try the pump anyway. We couldn't find a cigarette lighter anywhere in the VW, so I drove my car close enough to the VW to be able to reach the lighter port in my car. The pump worked fine, but after running several minutes, it hadn't pumped any air into the tire. The dial on the pump that shows the air pressure in the tire had not moved at all off zero. So we moved to plan B - take the tire off the car and take it to a tire repair place to be fixed. That involved getting the lug nuts off the wheel. I was able to do that by using my foot to push on the lug wrench. Once again, some bending and stooping and dealing with knee pain, but I managed to get the lug nuts off. But then ... the wheel would not budge. It was high enough to be off the ground: that was not the problem. The problem was the way the wheel fits on to the axle. Normally, when you get the lugs off, the wheel is loose and practically falls off on its own. Not this wheel! That baby was locked on the hub. We both tried using our hands and our feet to loosen it, but no luck. If we had had a rubber mallet, we could have banged it from behind the wheel - that might have done the trick. But we didn't have a mallet. Given the state of my shoulders, I have very little arm strength anymore, and Jerome wasn't much better. We needed a strong teen-ager! Not one in sight. Jerome's daughter, Margaret, has a boy-friend, Forrest, but he was in school and wouldn't be out for another couple of hours or so. So - Plan C - I decided to call a tire place I use a lot - Pete's Tire Barn just across the river in Chesterfield, NH. Could they send someone out to help us get the tire off and take it back to the shop? Nope .... their guy who might do that sort of thing was out for the rest of the day. So, what to do? What was Plan D? I have AAA - I actually have Platinum AAA. But I didn't think I could use it with someone else's car. "But," I thought, "why not call them, and if I have to, I'll just pay them." So I called. I had to given them our location and describe the vehicle. I did not know the year or model of the car (Jerome had gone back into his house at that point, so I couldn't ask him). It was just a VW with silver paint. They didn't ask, "Is this your car, sir?" They said someone would be there in about forty minutes. Actually it was more like 30 minutes. It was Al's Towing, from Vernon, VT. Not too far away. He looked the situation over, drove the VW up onto the ramp of the tow-truck, tied it down, never even asked to see my AAA card and was off for Pete's Tire Barn in a jiffy. So that was that! We followed in my car to Pete's, and explained the situation. They'll call me when the work is done and I can give them my credit card #, and either I or Forrest can take Jerome (or Margaret) there to pick it up. So that took care of that problem! I took Jerome home and went by the computer store to check on my laptop. They had successfully fixed the MacBookPro that had crashed, but my second laptop, the MacBookAir, needs a larger hard drive, so I had left it there Tuesday. But my calendar is on it, and I needed to check the calendar, so I asked if I could see my laptop for a minute. They ended up letting me take it home until the new drive comes in. They said they don't usually do that, but they would make an exception. By the time I got home, I was pretty tired, but I felt I had accomplished something,

Al's Towing and Pete's Tire Barn**************************** I rested up a bit and did some reading in preparation for the Swarthmore Short Stories course. Stories by Armistead Maupin and Carmen Maria Machado. The Husband Stitch by Machado and three chapters from Tales of the City by Maupin. Very provocative, especially the Machado story. It aroused both strong likes and dislikes from the class. I can't say much about them because they are fairly explicit sexually, but the discussion of the stories did lead to a special addendum after the course was "officially" over in which Peter Schwartz talked about what Swarthmore students are thinking and talking about in terms of sexual mores - with the caveat that an older, white, male teacher might not fully know about that, but he clearly knew more than we do! So that was interesting.

Armistead Maupin

Carmen Maria Machado