The cab pulled into my driveway and though I was pleased to see that my night-light was still burning, my car looked funny, and slumped on its haunches. I inspected it and found that the air in my right rear tire had expired. It was1:00 am, and I had just returned from a weeks-long trip; this problem could wait until a different part of the morning. I was going to the IndyFringe Festival with my friend on that day, and I would not be driving.
Paula pulled into my driveway at a little after 9 am and found me sweating from having replaced my flat tire with the “donut.” She left me a bag of food, reminded me of our Fringe schedule, and darted off to work. I re-inflated my tire at a gas — and air — station and returned home to drink my coffee, read the paper and watch “The People’s Court.” (That last will have my eldest child saying, “You’re such an old man, dad.”)
Later, “The Cat Below” kept me company as I replaced his favorite tire, though a little more stand-offish than usual, perhaps due to my long absence. As I plopped the donut and jack and lug nut tightening thingy into the trunk, I felt as competent as my youngest daughter, who once changed that very same tire on a highway in Ohio, in about 5.3 seconds. With me watching.
I know nothing about cars. It is all magic to me. When I turn the key and the engine does magical stuff, I pull the lever from “P” down the lane to “D,” press the magic petal and more magic happens. When my car stopped running one December day, I did not try to move it until the following June, when my friend James waved his magic wrench over it and pronounced it cured. Nothing about my man/car relationship is normal, easy and natural (discounting the radio and CD player: I got that.) But two days after I jacked the car back onto the newly-fattened tire, I decided to drive to the grocery store. A “whoppity-clunkity” sound soon made me turn down the volume on the CD and listen to my car. I pulled to the side of the road and walked my car, hoping that something would scream at me: “HEY! I’m hurt!” I noticed the four lug-nuts on the right rear wheel and thought, “Pretty sure I had five of those.” I had replaced the newly inflated tire without tightening the lug nuts.
Every man – and my daughter – would have done something different, but I touched the loose lug nuts and decided to limp back home. As my car crept along a side street, the whoppity/clunk became more insistent. I stopped, inspected the wheel and found that, where once there were five, there were now three lug nuts. A bolt of genius hit me, and I jacked up the car and tightened the remaining three luggos. Then I went “Sherlock:” Where was I when I first noticed the whoppity/clunk? And where was I when the whoppity/clunk went nuclear?
Every driving person in this nation has breezed past the debris of angry and wounded cars: fenders, tires, headlights, hubcaps, wiper blades, lug nuts. Who stops to gather the detritus of mobile America? A desperate car-boob like me, who was granted a giggling grace from the car-gods. I retraced my driving path to the store and found both of my cast-off lug nuts. They are now on my wheel, my wheel is on my car and game, set and match, Tony Stewart. Or, whomever.