Flat Tire -- A Tale of Two

Laurie says they make the lug nuts on those VW bugs so you have to have a combination to get into them. I don't know all the details, but the lugs were a big factor in their flat-tire experience yesterday.

All I know is that they figured it out and got to their horse show on time. Laurie and I have shared a couple of flat-tire experiences and lived to tell stories about them.

One occurred just past where their tire went flat yesterday. We were just path Athol (for those of you who don't live in the area, yes, it does sound like a bad word if you have a lisp). We were on our way to a powwow at the University of Idaho about three years ago.

The tire on the Jimmy went flat, and I didn't know what to do cuz if I recall correctly, it's got one of those donut spares. We called people who called Les Schwab in Ponderay. Then, Betsy at Les Schwab in Ponderay called people at Les Schwab in Hayden. It didn't take them long to get there, put the donut on and take the other tire back to their shop to fix.

We made it to Moscow in plenty of time. We may not have tried to change the tire because of our previous flat-tire experience which occurred late one stormy summer night on I-5 over by the Tacoma Mall. Sounds like one of those "most horrible beginnings for a mystery novel," doesn't it?

Well, by the time we got back on the road headed for our motel in Federal Way, our experiences came close to epic proportions. In fact, I did write about it in my second book. The story was called "Of Spud, Lugs and the Fuzz."

For a translation, you must know that a trainer on the coast was working with Laurie's horse Chris at the time. He nicknamed Chris "Spud."

You'll figure out the "Lugs and Fuzz" part as you read the following excerpt from the story, which flashed back into my mind yesterday morning when I knew my sisters were headed to a horse event and had a flat on the way.

Enjoy . . . .

. . . . One evening before we left the horse show, clouds came in over the area and started dumping some rather intense rain. As we traveled back to the motel, the rain hampered our visibility, making the drive down the big busy freeway all the more terrorizing. Headlights darted all over the place, and seeing the exact location of the exits was almost impossible.

Those hindrances, however, quickly turned into forgotten minor annoyances just as we approached the first few exits to Tacoma. I was driving in the middle lane, pushing the Cutlass Cierra to speeds of 65-70 m.p.h. to maintain my spot in the flow. Suddenly, we heard a loud thump followed by “kerthump, kerthump, kerthump.”

“Oh God, we’ve got a blow-out. What are we going to do?” I yelled frantically while grabbing the steering wheel with all my force. The next second I was fumbling around, trying to find the switch to the hazard lights. This was the first time it had been called upon by any member of our family since we had purchased the car just a few months before. The switch was not where I thought it was supposed to be.

“I can’t find the hazard switch! What am I going to do?” I screamed, trying to maintain control over the car. In the black of a blinding rain storm, the strangers racing through the night around me and behind me had no idea that I had a blow-out, and since I had no clue as how to get those emergency lights blinking , the only way they were going to find out was if I up and stopped in the middle of the freeway.

I didn’t think that was a good idea.

So I kept yelling expletives deleted and driving 60-plus with that flat tire. There seemed no route of escape from my middle lane. I watched the rear view mirror. Laurie kept looking behind us, while Alia sat speechless as a statue in the back seat. We traveled for almost a mile before Laurie spotted an opening.
“Okay, turn left,” she advised.

“LEFT is INTO the traffic,” I protested.

“Oh--- yeah,” she agreed. “Turn right now.”

I maneuvered the thumping machine out of the traffic and rolled to a stop near the guard rail. Vehicles darted past us like bullets with no sign of any good samaritans looking for a job. We figured that was okay, being country girls who read the paper and watched the news and heard about the insanity that happens to innocent souls in distress on America’s freeways. When we got out, we discovered one bright spot in what had to be the worst scenario any three females would want to face. The blow-out was on a rear tire on the off side of the freeway.

“At least my rear won’t be sticking out in that traffic while we change the tire,” I commented. The rest of our situation looked pretty dismal. It was 10:30 p.m. It was pouring rain. I had no idea where the jack or even the spare tire was located. It was dark. We had no cellular phone. Our friends probably wouldn’t be driving by to rescue us. We all knew we could be facing a long night ahead in the midst of a million people who would not dare to stop. The scene reminded me of the “Rhime of the Ancient Mariner,” only it was “people people everywhere but not a one to trust.”

After assessing the situation and feeling temporarily defeated, my natural bravado took over.
“We can change this tire, by golly,” I said. “Let’s get that flashlight out and find the spare.” That was about the only sensible comment I made during the next hour. From that point on, Laurie went to work like a trooper and relied on “When all else fails.” Oldmobile folks had been nice enough to provide a nice diagram showing where to find everything, and where happened to be under the carpeting in the trunk. A rather strange looking jack was attached to the donut spare tire. Laurie figured out how to get both out while Alia held the flashlight.

Then we studied the jack. It was obviously a new model with undoubtedly better features that some of those other toothpick type contraptions we’d seen attached under the hood or in the trunks of other cars. We failed to see why or how the thing worked. We turned it upside down and around and tried to figure out how to get it to at least look like a jack. For some reason it finally started making some sense and cooperating in my hands just as another glimmer of hope came rolling up behind our car. That was the first time I’d ever welcomed flashing blue lights on a freeway. My prior experiences had always drained me---mainly of change-- except for the time south of Calgary when the Canadian Mountie stopped me after clocking me at 80 m.p.h. for two miles. After giving me a strict lecture and telling me I could be a “guest of the province” for up to a week, he had a heart and simply told me to drive carefully.

I was really happy to see this Washington State patrolman as he stepped out of the car.
“Thank God,” I said. “Someone always comes to the rescue.”

He walked through the rain toward our bedraggled trio and surveyed the situation. By that time, Laurie and I had conjured up some confidence. Feminine pride and grit had set in, but actually I wasn’t going to mind a bit if the guy wanted to change the tire.

“I don’t quite understand how this jack works,” I said, showing it to the young officer, figuring he would certainly grab it and get going on the tire.

“Well, I’ve never seen anything quite like that before,” he said. I continued to fiddle with it and within a few seconds figured it out enough to set it down near the tire. As I tried to set it up in the right spot, the cop knelt down beside me and reached under the car for a solid place to put the jack.

“Go ahead and put it under here,” he instructed. When I had it in place and started trying to jack the car up without much success, he showed me that I’d have to rotate the tire iron handle instead of pumping it. As soon as it was apparent that I was making progress, the policeman abruptly announced that he had a potential blockage up the road a ways and that he would come back to check on us. He seemed to be in a hurry to leave us. At that point, however, we were feeling pretty cocky and were welcoming the challenge of proving to each other that we could certainly take care of ourselves.

We didn’t need help from a man.

Both Laurie and I had changed tires before. I had practiced several times on our Forest Service rig while sitting through twelve-hour traffic surveys that often averaged no more than ten cars a day. My partner, Chris, and I many times found ourselves desperate for entertainment in between our sessions of finishing off an entire cold chest full of food. Changing a tire ranked right up there next to cherry pit spitting contests. And Laurie had had hands-on experience when the motor home had a blowout on the I-90 one mile shy of George, Washington, on a beastly hot July day.

So as seasoned veterans of the road, we knew we’d be on our way in minutes. We again turned the process into a team effort. Laurie now held the flashlight while I rotated the tire iron, trying in vain not to scrape my knuckles on the wet pavement. I managed to raise the jack about an inch when it suddenly toppled off to one side.

Chalk up number one for the cop.

He had failed to find the two-inch perimeter of solid metal so diabolically planned by the perverse Cutlass engineers back at the Olds factory. After a few more expletives deleted, I managed to find paydirt. We found and installed it. The jack seemed to be more secure. This time the car rose steadily and without incident.

“Okay, Alia, you’re going to hold the lug nuts,” I instructed like a gung ho coach. “We’ll all have a part in this.” Alia seemed pretty noncommittal about this teamwork stuff, but as I loosened each lug, she held out her hand and grabbed it. Finally, I removed the hubcap, and then attempted to pull the tire off its rim. It wouldn’t budge. I attributed the failure to the fact that I had been bent over for too long in one position. So I stood up and then reached down to grab it again. It still wouldn’t move.

“Let me help,” Laurie said. Within an instant, she was kneeling on the wet pavement with both hands around the tire. She tugged and tugged with no success.

Teamwork once more.

“Here, you grab it on the top and the bottom, and I’ll grab the sides,” she suggested. Four hands and arms wrapped around each other like octopi and clamped themselves to the tire’s hardware.

“Be careful though. Let’s not get anybody hurt,” Laurie cautioned.

Pulling and tugging with all our might, we two farm girls---outdoors women accustomed to throwing 60-pound bales of hay --could not budge that tire.

“Driving on it that far must’ve bent the rim,” I concluded. “I’ll bet it’s stuck on there.” Out of desperation, I resorted to an old kitchen trick. I picked up the tire iron and beat on the tire. My rain-drenched logic told me that if such a strategy worked for ketchup bottle lids, it would certainly work on a tire. The tire, however, had not had any similar experiences. It stayed put. Several times Laurie and I bent over and tried various methods of pulling and tugging, each time to no avail.

“Well, it looks like we’re here for the duration,” I said as cars continued to zip past us on the freeway to one side and down an exit on the other. We leaned against the cement barricade the next half hour, sharing lots of ideas as the rain refused to let up.

“Maybe if we look pathetic enough someone will stop,” I suggested.

“No!” Laurie argued. “We don’t want anybody to stop unless it’s a cop or someone we know.”
Someone suggested having one of us wait for a break in the traffic, run across the exit and go look for a place where we could call.

“No!” I snapped. “We’re staying together even if we have to stand here all night. At least we all know where we are.”

During our 45-minute stint alongside the freeway, I’m sure at least a thousand pickups, motorcycles, cars and semis roared by. Of those, about five drivers decided to honk. But not one stopped.

We were prisoners of that road, hoping for a policeman to come and release us from our outdoor cell. We talked, we giggled, we walked around. We wished we had a cell phone so we could call Larry and beg him to come and fix the tire.

We imagined the horrible things that could happen to us and how it was going to read in the paper. “Three Idaho Spudettes Slain by Freeway Lunatic.” Occasionally, I picked up the tire iron and beat on the blow-out, hoping the tire would miraculously fall to the ground. When that failed, I’d proclaim that at least we had a weapon. Then I’d conceal it under my sweatshirt for whenever a troop of vicious vagabonds might show up to do us in.

Suddenly out of the darkness blue flashing lights appeared, first as if an illusion but then invitingly real. For the second time in my life, I welcomed the sight of those lights. A cop car pulled in behind the Cutlass. What appeared to be a different Washington State Patrolman got out of the car, walked our way and said nothing. He didn’t have a chance.

First, we applauded him and announced how glad we were to see him. Then, I walked toward him--always the journalist--giving him a complete clear, chronological report on our predicament.

“We’ve got this blow-out and we’ve just about figured out how to get the tire changed, but we can’t get it off the rim,” I explained. “Maybe we bent the rim because I had to drive almost a mile on it.”

The cop did not comment. A typical man, he simply walked toward the car, intent on analyzing the situation for himself. We could hear his radio blaring out a report of three female hitch hikers looking for a ride along I-5.

“We’ve got the lug nuts off, but we couldn’t budge the tire,” I told him as he bent over and inspected the tire closely. We stood over him as he studied, and I felt an urge to talk.

“Do you know that we had another cop stop here about a half hour ago, but he didn’t seem to know much about changing tires?” I said.

Laurie chose that moment to hit me really hard with her really sharp knuckles. I misinterpreted her message.

Our family has a warped way of showing affection. We double up our fists and pound on each other, many times leaving black and blue marks. I thought it was a bit strange that she chose this moment to send her big sister a sibling love tap.

Then the cop stood up and made a comment faintly reminiscent of something I’d heard earlier.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like that,” he said, fortunately in reference to the tire. Then, for some unknown reason, a strange possibility suddenly dawned on me.

“Do you suppose that we really didn’t get the lug nuts?” I suggested. “Maybe those are just the lug nut covers that we took off.”

The Love family had never had a car with lug nut covers, but somehow at this very moment it seemed that maybe the auto manufacturers might have come up with such a thing. We all stood and looked for a second; then, I grabbed the tire iron and found a second series of perfect fits. Sure enough, the lug nuts were still firmly attached. No wonder Laurie and I, the tough farm girls, couldn’t budge that stubborn tire. We then considered what success could have meant to our reputations.

“Yeah, they’re Amazons all right. ” I could hear it all now. We would have become legends, possibly even sought out as candidates for “American Gladiators.” But instead we now could consider auditioning our act for “Candid Camera” or maybe more appropriately “America’s Dumbest Freeway Females.”

Embarrassed, we giggled as I loosened the REAL lug nuts and dropped them one by one in Alia’s hub cap. The cop stood there watching and saying nothing as the gang of three once again cooperated and pulled the tire off with ease this time. Then Laurie handed me the slippery donut spare. When I tried to put the strange little tire on, it slipped out of my hands. That’s when the policeman decided he ought to help.

“Here I’ll get it,” he said. I stood up. He knelt down and deftly installed the tire. As he used his four-pronged tire iron to tighten the lugs and reached for the hub cap, my mouth went into motion once more.

“I can’t believe that the other Washington State patrolman didn’t know anything about changing a tire,” I commented. “He acted like he really didn’t want to change it because he found an excuse to take off.”

“I stopped here before,” the cop responded at the same time as Laurie’s second attempt to shut my big mouth.

“He’s the SAME one,” she whispered.

Where was the hole in the pavement when I needed it? I stood there wanting to become invisible.

“You’ve really done it this time, Marianne,” I thought to myself. “How are you going to pull that size 45 foot out of your mouth?”

“Yeah, I came by here about a half hour ago,” he said as he got up and wiped his hands off. We stood around him as he commented about stopping and then having to go off to a road blockage.
For once in my life, my brain quickly, calculating that in 30 minutes time it was possible that another cop might have stopped. This guy didn’t know that one hadn’t. So, obviously with the help of God above, I yanked that foot right out of my mouth and adorned my tongue with a thick silver coating.

“That cop had glasses,” I said. “He wasn’t nearly as good looking as you are.”

Laurie was impressed. Alia was impressed. I’m sure the cop was impressed as he headed toward his car.

“Thank you very much,” we yelled as he drove off. Then, we all doubled over with laughter before getting back in the car and heading for the Super 8, where we would find warmth, dry clothes and beds upon which we would lieand laugh ourselves silly about this near-death experience where our nemesis could very well have been an very insulted state patrolman. We envisioned the fact that he would probably not tell his wife this story but certainly would enjoy some belly laughs with the guys during the next state patrol coffee klatch.

“Yeah, those were the dumbest women I’ve ever seen,” he’d tell his buddies. “They thought they could take the tire off with the lug nuts still on.”

We delighted in telling our story about the fuzz and the lugs over and over as the week wore on. On the last day, we finally discovered the other route from our motel back to the fairgrounds. Besides eliminating a need to travel the scary interstate, it was 15 miles shorter.

And Laurie’s karma dramatically turned toward the better. With encouragement from the Lewis family and a troop of loyal fans from Sandpoint and Spokane, she climbed aboard Spud and won the Amateur Western Pleasure Championship at the 1996 Region 5 Arabian Horse Show. Luck was changing. A month later, Laurie and Barbara successfully drove their motor home to the Canadian National Arabian Show in Regina, Saskatchewan, where both won Canadian Top Ten plaques with their horses.

And they didn’t even have me, along to serve as the cheerleader and tire changer.

Note: The rest of this story and others about country hickdum, can be found in Postcards from Potato Land, which is available on www.amazon.com