FLAT TIRE STORY

alexander calder

Another cold day. This time I stayed at home where I belong. Don't want to drive again any time soon. In town yesterday I went into the hardware store for some flea one-spot treatment for Caterpillar. Talked with Marsha some about donkeys and horses. Saw my friend Tammy Sawyer, an old-time bass and dulcimer player, and we talked briefly. I opened the door to the parking lot and saw my right rear tire was flat. One more unexpected event to make me crazy. Nothing to do but bear down on it. Open the trunk, rearrange the things I keep in the trunk, a box of car-need things, a tent and a sleeping bag. I keep a sleeping bag and tent in the trunk for the unforeseen in case of need. If I were to get into a predicament stranded someplace and it cold, I have the sleeping bag. I have to store it someplace, thinking the trunk of the car a better place than in the house. The spare wheel was under the floor of the trunk, which needed lifting to extract the wheel, one of those hateful miniature wheels. I'm so accustomed to unforeseen speed bumps in these weeks, five now, I gave self to the situation with minimal cussing. The car had one of those factory jacks I threw away as soon as the car became mine and bought a real jack, the kind on wheels mechanics use. They are so easy and so convenient, the $45 it cost was nothing. It felt good to roll the jack under the rear axle and pump it up easily. This meant lying down on the ice cold pavement of the parking lot, which I was glad to do. I'd so much rather have a flat in a level controlled space with no traffic than on the side of the road. Having done this before, I'm checked out on the procedure, mapped it out, step by step in my head and followed the steps. It's a simple process with a good jack. Crawling under the fender, I had to turn my ball cap around backwards. Punk.

alexander calder

Two men I know stopped and offered help, separately. I thanked them and declined the offer. Changing a flat is merely a matter of the time it takes. Every step is simple. Loosen the lug nuts. Another purchase at the same time as the rolling jack was an X lug wrench, a steel one that won't make me feel like Superman when the wrench itself twists in my hands. The kind that come from the factory are good for nothing but frustration. A good jack and a good lug wrench are my number one accessories in whatever I'm driving. And a fire extinguisher. I keep one in the box between the two front seats, the arm rest. The fire extinguisher fits in that compartment like it was made for it, the other accessory I will not drive without having in the car. Experience has taught me that when a fire starts inside a vehicle, only a fire extinguisher will put it out. I was given no choice but to watch my Toyota pickup go up in yellow flames and black smoke over insulation mice had chewed off some wires. All I had was a towel. I'd put the fire out, lift the towel and it would start again, dripped and started one someplace else, towel back and forth, then another. Right away it went out of control. Everything in the interior of a vehicle is oil-based plastic and foam. All I could do was get back and watch. A fire extinguisher would have taken care of it at the start. I also carry a hammer in the door pocket. Having seen what happens, and knowing two people who burned up in cars, separately, I am not going to burn up in a car. Car glass cannot be broken hitting it with hands or elbows. It takes steel to break a side glass on a car. A claw hammer is a good tool with many uses. Also in the door pocket, I keep a long screwdriver, necessary for letting down the hydraulic jack. It's easy with a big screwdriver, very difficult trying to use a dime. The ice scraper I used yesterday stays in the pocket too. 

alexander calder

Turning the lug nuts off the bolts was a chore. They're old and hugging the bolt a little too tightly. That's a good thing so they won't unscrew themselves. I couldn't spin the wrench to turn them off the bolts. Went to the box in the trunk for some WD40. It wasn't there. It's in the house. Found a little spray can of lock-tite, something to spray into a lock when it's resisting the key. I sprayed some of it onto the lug bolts and it worked very well spinning a couple of them back on. I might talk with mechanic about getting some new lug nuts. I like keeping the parts on the car in good shape. I like changing a wheel to be easy instead of difficult. Just having to do it is difficult enough without having lug nuts that require wringing the wrench half a turn at a time all the way to the end of the bolt. Flats happen. It's a regrettable experience every time. I feel like it is important for my mental health to have every step of wheel changing work smoothly. This is at least the third one with this car. Driving country roads, screws and nails fall out of the back of working men's pickups bouncing up the gravel road with washboard in it. The tire picked up a big screw that looks like it fell off a car or pickup, wiggled loose from the body underneath. Flat tires are an element of country living. This one today was minimally aggravating, thanks to the experience of flats in the past that taught me to carry the right tools for the job. A cheap jack makes a major aggravation. A cheap lug wrench does too. I call it being kind to myself to buy the right tools, keep them in the trunk and be sure the inevitable that's always a surprise will be just another easy problem to solve. 

alexander calder

Lying on the pavement when the two different guys offered a hand, I remembered an old boy I saw at least twenty years ago changing a wheel by the side of the road. I was driving down the mountain on Hwy 21 with twenty-seven curves, for whatever reason I don't remember. It takes a lot to get me off the mountain. At the bottom of the mountain where the road straightened for a good chance to pass a truck you're dealt the misfortune of following down the mountain, a big Chevy SUV was parked beside the road, a bumper jack holding it up, an old country boy sitting on the ground with a spare tire. I passed by thinking he's got it under control. I re-saw him in my mind's eye and realized he did not have it under control. He was in his seventies, kept alive by a doctor and medications, has these huge tires to deal with, somehow got the spare out and onto the ground and the back end jacked up. He couldn't do any more. He'd met his limit. He was sitting beside the tire in frustration. I turned at the next place to turn around and went back to give him a hand. I could not have driven any further once I saw his situation. It wasn't morality. It wasn't good deeds. I saw he could not take the old wheel off and put the new one on. He didn't have the strength. I did. It's what we do in the mountains. You see somebody needs a hand, you lend a hand. It's mountain code. It's what hillbillies do. He was tickled somebody stopped to help him. When I saw him up close, I wondered how he made it as far as he had. The tires were big and he was frail. I went through the procedure of changing the wheels, uneasy about the bumper jack I was careful not to shake. I grew up in the Fifties when guys would crawl under their cars to work on them using bumper jacks. It was frequent in the news that a man was crushed to death when his bumper jack let go. I was glad to get the old boy back on the road, and he was thankful, offered to pay me. No, pay was not the purpose. We shook hands and went on our ways.  

alexander calder himself

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A POEM BY WALLACE STEVENS

bird in space

constantin brancusi

               OF MERE BEING


          The palm at the end of the mind,

          Beyond the last thought, rises

          In the bronze decor,


          A gold-feathered bird

          Sings in the palm, without human meaning,

          Without human feeling, a foreign song.


          You know then that it is not the reason

          That makes us happy or unhappy.

          The bird sings. Its feathers shine.


          The palm stands on the edge of space.

          The wind moves slowly in the branches.

          The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle 
                                                              down. 


                                        ---Wallace Stevens
                                            1879-1955

blue feather

alexander calder

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IN MY OPINION, BUT GRACIOUSLY

alexander calder

 

It's early Monday morning, first light. An appointment to repair a brake line in the car that has a rusted hole in it. The fluid in the left front brake holds enough to operate brakes enough to stop when necessary. I carry a quart of brake fluid for this purpose. The line broke Thursday. No problem staying at home. The appointment is for ten o'clock. I have an affliction that makes me worry about getting up on time when I have a morning appointment. I can't get to sleep the night before. The alarm system on the clock radio is so complex I've never attempted to figure it out. Went to sleep early last night to insure I'd get up early. Often when I lie down too early, I'll be awake all night. I turn the radio on down low and let it play while sleeping. I hear BBC news that is mostly African in the night, Nigeria and Kenya, the British colonies. The volume is down to where I can only hear what they're saying by listening closely. Mostly, it's just white noise. I use it when mind is racing. The white noise acts as a scrambling device for mind's ongoing activity, thoughts quit attempting to compete with BBC, mind shuts down and here comes sleep. I'm reminded of a quotation I wrote down from a utube interview with artist, Agnes Martin. She said, I don't have any ideas of my own, and I don't believe anybody else's. That leaves me with clear mind. I say, thank you, BBC, for clear mind. I've come to get used to hearing news from Africa. Like news from everyplace else, it's about killing. This bunch killed that bunch. And that bunch killed this bunch. African killing is up close, in your face with machetes and machine guns mounted on the beds of Nissan pickups, operated by hyper-stoned pre-teen boys. It's a totally different attitude toward life and death from mine. American news comes from a different attitude toward life and death from mine, as well.

 

 

alexander calder

 

That's a presumptuous saying, implying I know what my attitude toward life and death is. I ask self what I mean and get no answer. Even implying I know what their attitude is toward life and death. It's just different. Maybe the difference can help me to define my own. Like it takes darkness to define light and the other way around. Duality. Warlord mentality is medieval. Kings and castles of old Europe were warlords. China before unification was six provinces ruled by warlords. It looks like Africa is attempting to bridge the gap between the medieval and the post-modern world in a few decades. It's six decades after the civil rights laws in USA, and American racism has not diminished the least little bit. It went underground. Nothing like a black president to surface the racist submarine. American racism is out in the open where it can be dealt with out in the open. The black people are hunkering down, keeping a low profile, flying below the radar, staying out of white man's cross-hairs the best they know how. Many are not successful. Here, concerning my attitude toward life, racism never made sense to me. I came up in a racist family in a racist white baptist culture where racism was a natural law, like gravity. I learned in the Navy and from then on that regarding black people with the same respect as white people makes me a nigger-lover. Oh well. I'd rather be a nigger-lover than have a white robe in my closet for special occasions. I can't help but think the shrinking globe of our time has something to do with the clash of cultures going on all over the globe. Also, the USA has its tentacles in every country on earth, and the world is turning against us for it. Even Germany is now insulted by American arrogance. My attitude toward life does not want to dominate any country. It doesn't want to dominate anybody. I asked my friend Pat, who goes to Costa Rica for a month every year, how Costa Rica can exist without a military to protect itself at least somewhat from USA. She said Costa Rica has nothing USA wants; no oil, no minerals, no gold. They have nothing to fear.

 

alexander calder

 

One bit of sound counsel came to me from daddy in childhood. Because he barely made it through school after the sixth grade, he told me, your education is one thing nobody can take away from you. Last week I was asked why a man would want to take philosophy courses in college, you can't do nothin with it. A volcano of wind exhaled from my lungs, "For your life!" It can be very important in your life. I know a guy majored in philosophy at Chapel Hill working as a welder. He also has a fairly even temperament because he's a thinker, even reads books. He's not jumping up and down inside, waiting for the chance to fight somebody that looked at him wrong. Nor does he carry a "nine" in the back of his pants in case somebody who wants to kill him turns up. I can't help but feel like one's attitude toward life is a basic driving force. I've used my adult life to improve my own. Early on I had a fairly sour attitude toward life. Therefore, what I gave out was sour and what I got in return was sour, reinforcing what I believed about the world around me, a projection of myself. As my attitude toward life changed, the world around me changed, the people around me changed. My attitude toward life includes compassion and kindness in these years; therefore, I have plenty to draw from when needed. I've honed it down to what I call the gospel in a fortune cookie: Love God and treat others right. My next art object will have these words on it. My personal interpretation of others includes non-human others; the four-legged, the winged, the six-legged, the no-leggeds. When I treat others right, including donkeys, others tend to treat me right. I've "trained" the donkeys not to kick me by their own will, not by fear. I treat them right; they treat me right.

alexander calder

 

In the column of quotations on the right is one I hold to myself by Meher Baba as a reminder: (I paraphrase) Opinions reside in a superficial layer of the mind, having no affect on the core of personality, wherein resides one's attitude toward life. I have opinions, though I do not regard them truth. The Worthington coat of arms motto: In my opinion, but graciously. It reads like something in my horoscope. This was back when the name was in northern England, before anybody crossed the Atlantic. John Worthington, the original one to cross the water in my line, lost eight kids and his wife during and soon after the crossing. He had an inn in Philadelphia and a cattle ranch outside the city, in the same time Ben Franklin was there. He was a Quaker exiled from England for his faith. He found a second wife and raised several more kids. I didn't know any Worthingtons of the past, not grandfather, greatgrandfather, not even cousins. Of the Worthington third and fourth cousins I've met, I can see "in my opinion, but graciously." I can see it in photographs of distant relatives. It's a firmness in the face like standing on both feet, yet not aggressive. About ten years ago I met a 4th cousin at Ninemile, Tennessee. On sight, he said, "I can see the Worthington in you." I believe it is that attitude he saw in the set of the face, the eyes. I saw it in him too. For my part, but graciously amending in my opinion says I do not take my opinions for natural law. They grow out of my limited experience. I don't have a problem talking with somebody whose opinions are different from mine, though find few able to do the same in turn. It's like the old country sayin, Opinions is like assholes; everbody's got one. An attitude toward life I'm glad I entertain is that everybody has their own way of seeing by way of individual experience. No two can be alike. It's how it's meant to be. It's in the very life force itself. I feel much better about self when I fall in line with understanding we all have our own experience, our own minds, our own selves. The beauty is, like shells on the beach, no two are alike.   

 

alexander calder himself

 

 

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