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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ACT OF GOD

before the act

Can't help but hear about Toyota every day. The media playing the Toyota card for the very last drop of blood they can get out of it. Sure, it's not a good thing to be 75 yr old, driving a new Camry, loving your new car, then it's going faster than you can think and it's not like you're in the wide open spaces. They say a certain number have died; therefore, it's really bad. What's worse is interior fires in cars, pickups, tractors, big trucks. After my Toyota burned up, no fault of Toyota mfg, a mouse did it, I talked with people I knew and everybody I talked with either knew somebody who died in a burning car or knew somebody who knew somebody who did. A lot more vehicles burn up per year with people in them.

Nobody wants to be Joan of Arc, but an awful lot of people have done it quite unexpectedly, never thinking that a burning car interior is far more fatal than the gas tank exploding. I talked with an insurance man about making something of keeping a fire extinguisher. The issue with my truck could have been prevented before it got going if I'd had a fire extinguisher. It would have saved the truck, saved the insurance corporation paying. It would cost more to start requiring fire extinguishers, or even to be educational about it, than it costs to pay for burned up cars. I'm here to tell it for nothing, a fire extinguisher that doesn't cost very much can save your car and maybe your life. The interior of a car is fuel. All made of oil, like the gas in the tank. It doesn't explode like a near empty gas tank would; it burns like kerosene. That's to say it's about the same as burning gasoline except it doesn't explode when it starts.

The news media went into a feeding frenzy around Toyota for something that is definitely worth noting, but I'd feel confident in guessing a whole lot more people have burned up in a car fire agonizingly over the last year than have had a Toyota jump into hyperspeed. They don't bother to tell about that. It's too sad a story. Who do you blame but civilization? The same as with roadkill. I keep my fire extinguisher in the arm rest box in the middle of the front seat, beside me. All I do is flip the latch. I'm not putting it in the trunk or back seat area. It's right beside me like Jesse James's .45. When a mouse was the cause of the fire, it can only be called an act of God, which takes it to a whole new way of looking at it.

I can't help but think, if it's an act of God, then it could only be a blessing, a gift. It looked like the truck was taken away, which it was. Seeing the flames beyond reversing, I settled into acceptance right away, and once I accepted, I watched the fire thinking, something's going on and I don't know what it is. I was seeing the truck as needing to be cleared out of the way for what's next. Insurance gave me 4 times what I could have sold it for. That was one benefit. I started driving Jr's car because he wasn't using it, at his suggestion. I laugh remembering what he said when I told him I'd like to buy his car, "I aint sellin my damn car!" And I remember the time he said to me when he was ready to turn over to sleep, "Take a fool's advice, don't be in a hurry." I was thinking in that direction, anyway, but it was all the better to hear him say it. It carried more weight than coming from me. Vehicle buying and selling is not my art form.

Jerry Edwards sold the car to Jr for $500 when he found a great bargain on a next to new car. He told me he'd got a good deal on the car because it had been in a wreck. Tore up the right front end, which I already knew from looking at the paint and the way the right fender isn't a factory perfect fit. Jerry told me not to take it on a long trip. I didn't know what he meant then, and don't know what it means now. When Chuck Billings was bringing it up to speed, he found it needed a new ball joint in right front. Jerry said he'd replaced the one on the left front. New alternator, new wires, fuel injection system flushed, timing set, new plugs, new fuel pump. The car runs like new. Sometimes when I pull up out front, I'll let it idle for awhile and listen to the smooth motor. I thank Chuck every day for being a good mechanic when I'm driving it.

I didn't see it while the truck was burning, while I was thinking something was next, though knew not what. It turned out to be a simple transition from a truck that was nearly consumed underneath by rust, the slow fire, to Jr's car, the car I wanted to buy anyway. The estate gave it to me for my time with Jr, which I accepted gratefully, the car I actually wanted for my next/last vehicle, my old man car, 93 Buick Century, gray. The interior is perfect, just one degree shy of new. It's a good car. That was Jr's assessment the day I mentioned a tuneup would help his car run better, "There's nothin wrong with that car! That's a good runnin car!" He was right. I knew it then. I know it better now. A tune-up did help. This winter showed me the measure of the car. Minimal, very minimal rust, a perfect-running v6, a legend in good engines. With my fire extinguisher at my side, I believe the Catfish and I will go far together. I wouldn't be afraid to take it on a long drive.

VOLATILE INTERIORS

emergency

T0day I went to Farmer's Hardware and bought a fire extinguisher for Jr's car, which I'm driving now. I've determined I will always have a fire extinguisher in whatever I drive next. Curiously, it fits perfectly in the armrest/glovebox in the middle of the front seat. It fits like it was made for it. Snug, but not tight, enough that it doesn't rattle around. It stays in place. The instructions on the box say to put it in the trunk. No way. That's way too far away. And when you're excited because there's a fire under the dash, trying to fumble with the key and the keyhole in the trunk is a problem. Plus, you have to get out of the car, go around to the back first, then fumble with the key in a frantic state of mind. I want it next to me, so all I have to do is lift the latch, the top comes up and there it is.

Now that I know how fast a vehicle's interior burns, I will not be so vulnerable again. On the box they note that in USA there is a vehicle fire every 79 seconds. That's a lot of insurance replacement money. Seems like if insurance corporations would give some kind of incentive to people to have a fire extinguisher, like have one or you don't get insurance, they could give the CEOs even more billions for salaries. If there are that many vehicle fires, it means a lot of people lose their lives in the worst kind of way.

I don't want to know how it felt to Joan of Arc and all the women burned by the righteous in Pilgrim times. The interior of a car is so volatile, it's very much the same as throwing a gallon of kerosene inside a car and putting a match to it. It wouldn't go up any faster that way than without the kerosene. You have time to get out and run for it, and that's about it. If I'd had a fire extinguisher, I would have had only superficial damage. Wouldn't have cost me anything or the insurance corporation either.

I could almost go at this issue with missionary zeal, start a website, get a thing going like MADD and DARE and give talks in high school gyms to teenagers scaring them with horror stories into paying attention, promoting fire extinguishers. It had never entered my mind a car's interior was so volatile. Never thought about it. None of it is flame retardant. None of it, except the steel frames of the seats and steering wheel.

Witnessing such a fire from start to finish, I was dumbfounded. In a movie when you see a vehicle interior on fire, it really is like that. They don't need to add explosives to make the fire big. Of course, they use explosives to mock the gas tank explosions, for control, which I knew, but I still did not want to see the gas tank explode. It was full, so it wasn't as bad a problem as a tank full of fumes, but it is still 17.5 gallons of 83 octane gasoline. That's a lot of fire. Napalm is made of gasoline.

Two women of our county, that I know of, both of them women everyone who knew them had nothing but the best to say about them, were burned to death in vehicle fires, one a car, the other a tractor. Wonderful people, both of them were. It wasn't right then and it isn't right now that they had to burn up as they did. I don't know about other people's karma, or my own, but I still don't see that either one of those women deserved such a frightening awful way to go.

When I was watching it burn and taking pictures I was thinking of them. I was actually relieved to see that it was at least fast for them. I'd imagined Susan slowly tortured by flames, which she was indeed, but I imagined for a long time. What I saw was it wasn't long at all. It was horrid, and it was a very long minute, but it wouldn't have been much longer than that in seconds. I think of them as people in my world, which is a small world, and expand that to the world of all the people not in my world, all other counties in the country. If every county has 2 people who died in such a way, that's a lot of people adding them all up.

What I saw, with these two women in my mind from the very first moment I realized a fire was going, was our vehicles are far more lethal as fire hazards to the occupants than flying through the windshield headfirst into a power pole. Any kind of little fire that gets started, the vehicle is gone as soon as it starts. Without a fire extinguisher. The one I bought today was only $15. That is very little compared to the expense and misery of a vehicular blaze.

I know we can do nothing about making car interiors fire retardant, but since they are so volatile and will go on being so, a little self-help goes a long ways. I'm telling you this, because you're dear to me and this strikes me as something really important to understand, that your vehicle interiors are high-powered fuel. I don't mean to be your Brooklyn step-mother and browbeat you to catatonic boredom with it, I just feel a need to share that part of my experience, which I believe is the most important part. One of the firemen told me they have a lot of experience with vehicle fires.

Much of this I see as another hazard of the modern world. I think about a jet pilot. Something goes wrong. Zap. Your head in the helmet might be found someplace, but nothing else. It's the hazards for going fast like we like to do, and mass production keeping costs down as much as possible. It's how we live now. I cannot make an entirely flame retardant automobile interior.

What I've seen is this extremely dangerous pod we lock ourselves inside when we go someplace can have all its potential danger removed with a fire extinguisher. Danger eliminated. Of course, you can get out and save yourself easily, but then your car, truck, tapes, cds, tools, all the stuff you carry is gone. And it goes away before your very eyes, up in smoke, thick black boiling smoke. It looked like an oil well fire. An extinguisher would have eliminated all that smoke pollution. It was the sort of air pollution that can be seen from a satellite.

I continue to be overwhelmed by gratitude for the volunteer firemen, who also make the fiddlers convention possible. Like Bob Lane said while he was driving me to Jr's, you don't know how important they are until you need them. Isn't it so. These are the men who chose to stay here and live the best they can instead of going to a city after high school for a better paying job. These are the people who carry on mountain culture through their generation on into the next.

Mountain culture is a changing thing like everything else. These are the mountain people of this generation who carry the tradition. What I stood there and watched, more overwhelming than seeing my truck in flames, was these guys are carrying with them the best of the mountain spirit, the core of it. You see and hear about "the kids these days," and there are some losers going about, always are, always will be, but a lot of these guys were of the "younger generation" and they weren't no fools among them. It made me feel at ease about the future of the mountain people.