Tired Out
I have gotten to the age where I can begin a story with the phrase “I can remember when. . .” So, here goes:

I can remember when the way you dealt with a flat tire while driving was to pull off the road, walk around the car to survey the problem, curse a little bit, and then open the trunk, remove enough junk to take out your spare and the jack and lug wrench, and then attack the problem. Your biggest concerns were determining whether your spare had air in it or whether the lugs were too tightly tightened to budge them. How 60s, 70s, or 80s was that?

I am also modern enough to remember when you dealt with a flat tire by following the earlier steps (including the cursing) and then removed a half-sized “donut” from your trunk and used that to replace the flat on a temporary basis.

Don't forget the donut!

I have also reached the age when I can remember when you could call on AAA or another service to handle most of the necessary steps without a lot of strain. You just had to wait long enough for a mechanic to arrive to fix or replace the tire.

But none of these worked for me when we had a blow-out while on a visit in the Berkshires last week. As it turns out, in 2018, many cars, mine included, are no longer equipped with a spare, either donut or full sized. What you have are a repair kit to patch and re-inflate the tire and a phone number to call for assistance if that doesn’t work.

No one—not AAA, not the service department of the nearest car dealership, not the insurance company that touts its 24-hour roadside assistance—is willing to bring a replacement tire to your car if you lack a working spare or donut. The best you can hope for is a tow to the nearest garage or car dealership. And then a long wait. Which is what happened to us.

It seems that most garages and even car dealerships do not stock even those tires that are standard on many of their models. Everyone gets their tires from the same suppliers. And no one can promise delivery from that supplier in less than 24 hours. In our case, the wait was nearly 48 hours. Luckily, we had a place to stay and no place to get to fast.

But I am not whining—much. What I am doing is reminiscing about a father-son moment that involved replacing a flat tire.

I can remember when my parents came north to New York for Audrey’s and my wedding 45 years ago. It was mid-February, snow was in the air and on the ground, and I was driving my parents and my Charleston-based friends Charles and Robyne from the airport to the motel in which they would be staying in Yonkers, of all places. And we had a blow-out. Miraculously, I maneuvered the car safely across three lanes to the shoulder and stopped. My father, Charles, and I got out of the car and surveyed the damage. I think I cursed. My father didn’t. He never did.

Then we got to work. We unloaded suitcases from the trunk and unearthed a full-size spare and jack. (This was 1973, after all.) Then my father gave me a true teaching moment. He searched on the side of the road for large stones to put behind the tires to keep the car from slipping back when we jacked up the car and removed the flat. Is that advice in any manual, or do you just have to have a father with worldly wisdom? Then we completed the tire change and got back on the road. No long wait, and no big deal!

This guy must have learned about the stone from my father. 

I called Charles today to find out if he remembered the incident. He did and added something I had conveniently forgotten. He says that my father demanded that we go the next day to the nearest Sears (can you remember that store brand?) to buy four new tires for the car. “You didn’t have the money for the tires then," Charles said, "so we put them on my credit card, and you paid me back after your next pay day.” He added he is still waiting to receive an interest payment he has been owed for 45 years. Somehow, that part of the story doesn't come to my mind at all.

A late, lamented Sears tire store, Most have shut down in our area.