Fix a Flat Fails

The beaters were a constant part of our lives growing up with our father.  Like women, or men, they come and they go.  But one beater in particular stood out.  It withstood, or attempted to, the test of time.  This beater was the Isuzu Trooper II.

This was, according to my dad, his first real car.  My mother and father met in Houston, courted, fell in love and eventually got married.  My mother’s parents were also very wealthy.  Wealthy in spirit but also wealth in the benjamins.  My grandfather, on my mom’s side, had come back from the Korean war, married my grandmother, bought a farm and worked at a meatpacking plant.  His farm thrived and they spent their money wisely.  Through hard work and ambition he worked his way up the ladder until he landed the CEO spot.  He was in the big leagues.  They had money but this was due in large part in how they managed their money.  They lived below their means.  They weren’t extravagant.  They didn’t yearn for the newest car, or the McMansion in the suburbs, or whatever was the equivalent during the period.  They had their shit on lockdown and lived very comfortably.

Because of what they had earned through hard work my grandparents were able to help their children out.  A lot.  School was paid for.  Houses were co-signed.  Shit like that.  Again, nothing extravagant, but a big step up on the rest of the American game.  And this generosity was also gifted upon my father.  At this point in time my parents, I hope, were still very much in love.  And he was a part of the family.  If shit went down my grandparents were more than willing to help out.  And they did time and time again.

One such instance was with my father and his car.  A little Isuzu Pup.  He was traveling home from work when the tire blew out.  Catastrophically.  I can still remember when the truck was towed backed to the house, how sharp the rubber was as my little hand surveyed the damage.  It looked like something out of a cartoon, the way the tire flayed out from the rupture.  But I digress.

The tire, hell bent on creating collateral damage upon its death, more or less destroyed the truck.  It was  a cheap import with high miles and more or less wasn’t worth fixing.  My mother relayed this to her parents and they swooped on down and picked up the pieces.  And by that I mean they wrote my dad a check for ten grand.

And after much looking and perusing, and probably praying from my mother, they decided to get an Isuzu Trooper II.  A state of the art sport utility vehicle recently introduced into the American market as a competitor for Jeep.  And it did that most effectively by being incredibly cheaper.

My dad loved this car and took care of it.  He nursed it.  He changed its oil.  He cleaned it, carefully and lovingly.  It was, besides his children, his baby.  He had a strong emotional connection with this car.  This connection resulted in him dumping loads of money, so much money, to keep this beast on the road.

But never the tires.  Never the god damn tires.  Many take for granted how fucking important tires are on vehicles.  They transmit the power to the ground.  The give us traction when driving.  They can be exceptionally vulnerable.  They wear out.  And this wear can be dangerous.  When a tire blows it can not only fuck up your day but also the days of others motorists nearby when shit hits the fan.  So take care of your tires.

I know all of this now thanks to my father.  Growing up with my dad has given me a blueprint, a map, for my life and what not to do.  One thing that I am eternally grateful for is that all of my father’s mistakes, the horrible and terrible mistakes, have showed me what not to do in this life.  These precious lessons are burned into my brain, my being, like the shadows burned into concrete in Nagasaki after the atom bomb fell.  I have learned what not to do by vicariously living through my father and his failures.  You always gotta look at the glass half full.

The Trooper at this point was on the last leg of its long life.  My father was no longer pumping money into it and had made a tenuous peace with the idea that this vehicle, like everything else, will die.  As a result it was generally falling apart.  Road worthy, but falling apart nonetheless.  All parts make up the whole, and the tires were no different.  They were old.  They were dry.  They were bald and balding some more.  One tire in particular wanted to give up, but my father just wouldn’t let it.  He kept pumping it full of fix a flat.  And this day, this fatefull day, was the one the tire chose to say enough.

My father was driving Iris, myself, and lil bro Luke to school.  In the fashion typical of my father we were of course running late.  It was a cool spring morning when we heard the sound.  The sound that will make any adult’s stomach drop.  The thump, thump, thump sound a flat tire makes at speed.  We pull to the side of the road.

My dad gets out and inspects the damage.  It looks bleak.  He heads to the back of the Trooper to get a can of fix a flat.  Some may wonder, why not use the spare?  The answer to that question lies in the fact that my father had already used the spare, a full sized one, to replace the previous tire that had said fuck it and went to meet its maker.  Now that I think of it I can see why full size spares can be a problem.  They make you lazy, complacent.  They lull you into a false sense of security.  Sure, they fix the problem at hand, a flat tire, but they do that job far too well.

Doughnut spares do the job too, but not for long.  You shouldn’t drive as fast as normal when using the doughnut spare.  It is designed to merely get you to where you need to go and then the tire shop.  Nothing more.  Plus it looks ridiculous.  Having a doughnut spare on your car is a constant and bitter reminder that you need to get a new tire.  It mocks you.  It taunts you with what you have lost and the cost that it will take to replace it.  It breaks you and motivates you to suck it up, drop the cash, and get a new tire.

Not so with a full sized replacement.  It’s a normal tire.  You put it on and you’re good to go.  You really don’t need to get a new tire.  And why should you?  You already have a set of four good tires anyway.  Again, with so many other things, you chose to roll the dice.  But again this is a game that you will eventually lose.

And we lost it that day the tire died.  My father tries one can of fix a flat, and it shows promise.  It gets some air in it, but only for a moment.  He tries, in a futile attempt, to use another.  Again, a heartbeat but only for a moment.  Soon after the second can fix a flat starts to ooze out of the tire stem, and then the tire its self from the many holes and punctures that can no longer be kept under control.  Its mission critical and we have no choice but to walk.

Again this happened during a time before cell phones.  And since we were coming from Archbold, from our house in the country, we had no choice but to hoof it.  So my dad gets us all out of the car, with our backpacks, and we head down the long country road with no real plan of attack.  We are too far out to walk to a gas station, or a payphone, or anything or anyone that may be of help or service to us.  So we walk until we come across some homes.

This day was one of the first times that I can remember experiencing the worst that man has to offer and also the best that man has to offer.  I now know that the world is a fucked up place, and people are generally selfish, dangerous, ignorant and greedy creatures.  But back then I had no clue.  Everything was peachy, more or less, outside of my little microcosm.  Yeah shit wasn’t great at home, but I had yet to learn that it was just as un-great, if not more so, in the world at large.  This was one of the days that I grew up a bit.

As we are walking towards the nearest home on the road we see a police car cruising towards us in the distance.  Since I was little and did not yet know any better I thought that we were going to be rescued.  Because that is what police are supposed to do.  Help you out when things are hairy and all that jazz.  My dad starts waving his arms in the air.  We start waving are arms too.  Were only about a quarter of a mile from the car at this point, and from the trooper’s vantage he should clearly be able to put two and two together;  a family, walking down a desolate country road at 8 in the morning, an empty car off in the distance on the side of said road.  Shit, what else could it be but a broken down car and some folks in need of assistance?  No such pieces were put together by this particular cop. 

We see him coming, closer and closer.  We are expecting him to slow down a bit, to pull over and see what’s up.  To do his fucking job.  Nope, not today.  He just zooms right the fuck past us.  My dad is more shocked than angry.  Us kids are just confused.  Strike one against humanity.

We keep walking and finally make it to a house.  One of only a handful that we can see on the road that we are on.  We all walk up and my dad knocks on the door.  Nothing.  He rings the bell.  Nothing.  We keep on walking in silence. 

We walk and then we walk some more.  Back then it seemed like forever.  We might as well 

have been in the fucking Sahara.  But that was from the perspective of a whiny child.  In reality we couldn’t have walked more than three miles.  But it seemed like forever.

 And then there’s a break.  In the distance we can hear noises.  The closer we get, the more distinguished they become.  It is the sound of a saw.  The sound of construction.  And the sound of construction means that there are people, and if there are people than they can surely help us.  So we pick up the pace as we head towards the next nearest house, the house where there are definitely people at.  

Looking back on this moment I still can’t believe how fucked up it is.  For posterity I will account the facts as they happened.  No bullshit, no exaggerations.  This particular house that we were approaching set back a bit from the road.  A simple two story house with an attached garage.  Inside the garage are two men.  They are working on something, something that requires a tabletop saw.  Their busy sawing away and do not notice us, at first, walking down the gravel driveway.  Our foot steps must have given us away during a lull in the noise.  That distinct sound of gravel as one treads upon it.  The crisp grinding of rocks being forced down upon one another, bombarding each other with unforgiving intensity from the weight above.  My father makes eye contact with them.  They stare at us, sizing us up.  A man with his three children, his three young children with their backpacks slowly approaching them.  Before a word is uttered, even exchanged, one of the men slowly walks towards the back wall of the garage and hits a button.  The door, so slowly, begins to close.  We stop in our tracks.  The door envelops their heads, then their torsos, their legs and then they disappear completely as it shuts.  Were frozen, unsure of how to handle this blatant fuck you.  Our contemplation is broken by the sound of the saw.  Strike two. 

Defeated, utterly and totally, we ventured forth into the now cruel world.  What had been a bright spring morning suddenly lost its sheen, its luster.  Birds stopped chirping.  The sun disappeared.  It started to rain.  A tornado descended from the heavens and violently began tearing up the earth.  It hit first the hospital knocking it over like a house of cards.  It evaporated.  Immediately after it barreled towards a building full of puppies and kittens and babies and really nice old people.  This too was destroyed, annihilated.  Due to the mass of mammalian based life that was instantly wiped out we were instantaneously doused in a fine red mist.  This mist, composed of blood and other organic matter, fell everywhere and stained everything.  Shocked from the carnage, resigned to our fate, we could only huddle together and cry as the tornado now headed straight for us. . .

I may have exaggerated a bit but more or less this shitty day had turned even shittier.  We walked and walked some more.  The idea of making it to school on time was one of the past.  We just wanted to find some fucking help at this point, any help.  And as the clouds parted, and the sun shone through, are help finally arrived.

We tried our luck once more on the next house that we came across.  And you know what?  They fucking helped us.  It was an older couple.  Farm people.  Decent people.  They invited us in after having a hushed conversation through the screened door with my father and giving us a good once over.  We seemed harmless enough.  My dad made a phone call to my step mother at the time and salvation came at last.  

For their aide, their kindness, we sent them a fruit basket a week later after creepily driving by their house to get their address.  Nothing says thank you quite like a fruit basket.