I said goodbye to the Marriot hotel in Mobile, AL, at 6:00 am and by 11:00 am had already passed through Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. I was looking forward to my dinner reservation at Bohanan’s in San Antonio that evening. Savoring their amazing 40 oz. porterhouse two years ago had been a Significant Emotional Event for me, and I wasn’t about to cross 877 miles of Texas without trying to duplicate the experience. Traffic had been surprisingly light so far– even while passing through Baton Rouge during morning rush hour.
“I’m making excellent time,” I thought. (In hindsight, right about then I should have knocked on wood. Or at least the cracked faux-wood trim of my pickup.)
By the time I was approaching Houston the temperature was nearly 90 degrees, as the heat waves shimmering over I-10’s freshly-paved blacktop attested. But the truck was doing fine, pulling the trailered minivan without a struggle. My gas mileage was nothing to brag about, but that was to be expected. Everything indicated another smooth four hours to the San Antone Riverwalk and my steak.
“Ah, that porterhouse,” I reminisced. I could almost taste that succulent treasure, the deep, thick juicy, tender meat, perfectly marbled, and grilled to perfection.
I was aroused from my drool-inducing, gastronomic daydream by a honk and a wave from a car zipping by me in the passing lane. I waved back, thinking, “Friendly people here in Texas!” A minute later, I heard a honk from another passing car, its passengers also waving, but a bit more emphatically than the first.
“Hmmm. Maybe it’s my Florida license plate?”
Another beep from a passing SUV, at the same time my truck began a slow sashay from one side of my lane to the other, made me realize that, friendly or not, these people were trying to tell me something.
It was the summer of 2003, and two weeks before, the Coast Guard had issued me transfer orders from Florida to Oregon. Irina and I had sat down to figure out how to move ourselves, our three young sons, two vehicles, and all our household goods across the country. We settled on a strategy which would unfortunately split our forces but hopefully make us some money. We would do a DITY move, which is why I was now singlehandedly driving a stuffed-to-the-gills pickup truck which was pulling a similarly loaded minivan on a U-Haul trailer down a Texas freeway.
As I struggled to keep my meandering rig in my lane, I could see through my side mirror that the pickup’s left rear tire appeared to be completely flat. “Ah, that’s why they were honking. Nice of them!” Considering I was pulling about 7,000 pounds of trailer and minivan, I was surprised the effect hadn’t been more dramatic. But not wanting to press my luck, I coasted toward an upcoming exit that appeared to be temporarily closed due to some repaving. Perfect! The pickup, trailer, minivan, and I rolled to a stop in that fleshy part of the exit between the forefinger of the freeway and the thumb of the closed off-ramp. I got out to survey the damage.
A DITY move is a way for a military member to make some money while being transferred from one duty station to another. The government normally pays a van line to move a military member’s household goods, but if the member elects to move some or all of those goods himself, the military reimburses him based on the rate that it would have paid a carrier to do so. In military speak, this is called a Do IT Yourself or DITY move. Since members who drive to their next duty station already get their travel expenses paid for, they can turn a small profit by bringing some of their possessions with them. The more weight they carry, the bigger their profit.
To exploit this perk, we had decided that I would drive both our vehicles to Oregon. The Dodge pickup (with a “topper” covering the bed) would pull our Toyota minivan on a U-Haul “Auto Transport” trailer. And, we would stuff both vehicles with the heaviest possessions we had. (The rest of the family would fly out commercially after I arrived in Oregon.)
The first thing I needed to do for the 3,200-mile trip was to get a tune-up and new tires for the truck. I knew the standard tires wouldn’t be able to handle the forthcoming load, so I had all four replaced with heavy-duty E series tires. Then we were ready to begin loading the vehicles. We started with the pickup.
Into the back bench seat we loaded box after box of books: history books, homeschooling books, classics, cookbooks, art books, Time-Life books, coffee table books—all in all, 30 fifty-pound boxes stacked tightly from floor and seat bottom to ceiling. Into the front passenger seat went the heavy fireproof file boxes containing our important documents, my luggage, and cases of canned food—also stacked to the ceiling. We then crammed the enclosed truck bed with more canned food, boxes of music, software, and movie DVDs, a few pieces of heavy furniture, all our dishes, cast iron pots and pans, two large rolling tool cabinets, and exercise weights.
We then attached the trailer to the truck by connecting the trailer’s tongue to the truck’s hitch ball, then the security chains, then the emergency brake chains, and finally the wiring for the trailer’s lights.
Then it was time to pack the van. And that was when we ran into a problem: Although only an inconvenience at the time, this issue would have a profound impact on me a couple of days down the road. In fact, about 30 minutes after stepping onto that steaming asphalt on that blistering June afternoon in Texas.
Like the pickup, we crammed cargo into the van from top to bottom, stem to stern, leaving only the driver’s seat free so that I could drive the van onto the trailer after it was loaded. We planned to then backfill the driver’s seat with another 300 lbs or so of cargo before locking the van up and securing it to the trailer. After a couple hours of packing, and with the van now bursting at the seams, I lowered the trailer’s two integrated ramps to the ground, wedged my way into the cramped driver’s seat, drove the van carefully up onto the trailer, turned off the ignition, and attempted to get out. I could only budge the driver’s door an inch.
“What the hell?” I asked no one in particular. I rolled down the window and hollered to Irina, “Hey, I can’t open this door! Is something blocking it?”
She came over, took a look, and replied matter-of-factly, “The door’s hitting the trailer’s fender because the he van is riding so low with all the weight in it. You won’t be able to open any of the side doors.” Son of a bitch. That meant that the only way to get out of the van after it was on the trailer would be to climb out the big tailgate door. (This was before key fobs could remotely control car windows, so even though I could exit the driver’s seat by climbing out the window, and we could then load the driver’s seat through the window, there would be no way to close the window afterwards.) But I couldn’t climb out the back of the van because it was fully packed. We would have to make a small tunnel for me to crawl back out through and then backfill that and the driver’s seat once I had climbed out of the van. I backed the van down off the trailer so we could start that process.
We spent the next half hour pulling out enough cargo to clear a small crawlway from the tailgate to the driver’s seat, including, I noticed about halfway through the process, a heavy box containing the Time-Life Book series The Canadians. As I dragged that box gruntingly behind me while crawling butt-first out of the van, I remember thinking, “I don’t remember buying this series. The Canadians? When did we get that?”
After a few more grueling, cargo-dragging sorties, I had cleared a big enough path to crawl from the tailgate to the driver’s seat. I drove the van back onto the trailer, set the parking brake, and crawled back out through the tunnel to the tailgate. We then reversed the unloading process, including taking advantage of the now empty driver’s seat to stuff more cargo there. As I once again was forced to drag The Canadians up to the front of the van, in between my grunting, I half-yelled to Irina, “Hey, why did we get an entire Time-Life Books series on Canadians? Are there really enough interesting things about Canada to make up an entire book series?” She either didn’t hear me, or more likely, didn’t think my comments were worth responding to.
After jamming the last piece of cargo into the back of the van, it was time to secure it to the trailer. First, I had to wrap the trailer’s built-in tire straps carefully around each of the van’s front wheels and ratchet them tightly so the van wouldn’t budge underway. Then I attached two big safety chains, one to each of the van’s axels. Lastly, I slid the ramps back into their slots under the trailer and locked them in place.
Finally, with a loaded trailer, two vehicles bulging with household goods, and a full tank of gas, I was ready to head out. I departed Clearwater early the next morning, planning to make it to Mobile the first night and San Antonio the second.
The first day’s travels had gone smoothly. The truck purred along nicely, the trailer handled well, and I was able to maintain a comfortable 60 mph, first along I-75, then onto I-10, arriving in Mobile around 7:00 pm for a nice night’s sleep. (I would need it.) And, as smooth as my second day had been so far, it was starting to take a turn in a very different direction.
Back in Texas, as I climbed out of the truck, I was hit with the oily fumes of the obviously new blacktop and a sweltering blast of air much hotter than the forecasted 90-degrees. The pavement was absorbing a lot of heat, and I had stopped in the middle of a shadeless island of it. It felt soft under my feet as I walked to the back of the pickup, and I glanced up distainfully at the cloudless sky wishing I had a hat or some sunscreen. No doubt they were both somewhere in the bowels of the vehicles, but I had no idea where to even start looking.
A lap around the rig confirmed that the only damage was a very flat left rear tire—one of the new ones. “No big problem,” I thought. “Just a delay. I have a spare. It’s not an E-rated tire, but it should get me to the nearest Tire Kingdom–or whatever they have here in Texas–where they can throw on another E-series.”
I knew the truck’s spare wheel was tucked up under the bed, held in place by a cable which is winched down to lower the wheel. This was done by sticking the tire jack’s removable handle into a receptacle seated in the rear bumper. By cranking this double-purpose handle, the spare wheel could be raised or lowered. I just needed to retrieve the jack, the lug wrench, and that handle, and would soon have the spare on and ready to go. “And, I’ll still have plenty of time to make San Antonio and my steak,” I calculated.
But, a moment later, I abruptly stopped in my tracks as I realized something a bit disheartening: On this pickup, the lug wrench, scissors jack, and handle are mounted under the back bench seat. To access them, the base of the seat must be swung up and forward. I would not only have to remove all the book boxes on topof the back seat, but because the seat bottom couldn’t swing forward with all the book boxes stuffed in between the front and back seats, I would also have to remove all the book boxes behind the front seats of the cab. All 30 of them. “Okay, maybe a bit more than a slight delay,” I acknowledged to myself.
I sighed, looked at my watch (12:15 pm), and worked up the motivation to walk around to the right front side of the truck and get started with the unloading. As I opened the front passenger door and then the little half-door to the back seat, I had another discouraging realization: To wedge the book boxes in the rear of the cab in place, we had moved the front seats as far aft as possible before loading the front passenger seat. I could not remove the back seat boxes unless I moved the front seat forward, but I could not move the front seat forward without unloading most of the things on it and from the floor in front of it. Thus, I was going to have to unload almost the entire cab of the truck just to get the jack to change the wheel! I groaned at this lamentable situation, but having no choice, grudgingly set to work.
I pulled out the 300 pounds or so of my luggage, the fireproof file boxes, and the canned food, and piled them on the asphalt to the side of the truck. With the front seat finally able to slide forward, next came the books. One at a time, 50-pound box after 50-pound box, I pulled them out, adding them to the growing heap of sundries on the asphalt. Three were labeled Computer Books (“Was I ever going to look at these again?”), another few Coffee Table Books (“I doubt we’ll even have a coffee table at our new place.”), a lot of History Books (“Well, those are okay. Despite what Irina says, I will probably read those someday.”), Homeschooling Books (“Okay, THOSE we will definitely need.”), and a lot of Time-Life books: The Epic of Flight (“Excellent!”), The Seafarers (“Awesome!”), World War II(“Superb!”), The Old West (“Splendid!”). Thirty sweaty and exhausting minutes of this and I was about done. “Okay, one more box…what’s this one…The Canadians!! What? Another box of The Canadians?!”
Forgetting for a moment our agreed-upon strategy of bringing as many heavy items as possible, I groused loudly “How many of these damned Canadians books are there? Who in God’s name even bought these? The boys are never going to read them, I could care less about Canada, and Irina doesn’t even read books in English! I can’t think of even one famous Canadian, for Christ’s sake. Why did we even bring them?” I ended my rant by emphatically dropping the box of books with a thump on the ground next to the now pyramid of possessions stacked on the asphalt, paused, wiped the sweat from my face, and was suddenly sheepishly relieved that no one was around to hear that rather childish rant.
“I need to drink some water,” I realized and quickly drained the last of the only water bottle I had with me. Not quite sated, I assured myself, “I’ll be able to get some more soon at the tire place.”
Flipping up the back seat finally revealed the previously inaccessible jack and accessories. “Okay, the rest should be easy compared to this,” I assured myself. “Let’s get this wheel changed and get me to a porterhouse!” Thinking of what would be waiting for me in San Antonio put a little energy back into my step as I grabbed the jack & associated gear and strode to the back of the truck. I glanced at my watch. It was 1:00 pm.
After inserting the jack handle into the special receptacle, I cranked the spare wheel to the ground underneath the bed of the truck. Now I just had to reach in and drag it out of there. I knelt to do so but immediately yelped and leapt back to my feet, rubbing my bare knees which were now slightly black. I didn’t know if that was because they were badly burned or just stained from the blacktop, but either way, I needed to put something between me and the asphalt before I tried that again.
I grabbed the only thing I could quickly find to do the job—a Tom Petty T-shirt from my suitcase. I doubled it up, laid it on the ground, and knelt on it. I hoped the asphalt wouldn’t stain it. I was able to reach the spare wheel this time and drag it from under the truck, gratified to see that it was adequately inflated. I retrieved Tom Petty from the ground and absentmindedly used it to wipe the dripping sweat from my face.
That done, I loosened the lug nuts on the bad wheel, inserted the scissor jack under the truck frame’s strongpoint, attached the handle, and began to crank. Tried to crank would be more accurate. The jack would not move. “What’s going on?” I wondered, nervously. “Don’t tell me the jack is broken after all that!” But the jack was fine. All the heavy crap in the bed of the pickup combined with the tongue-weight of the 7,000-lb. trailer was simply too heavy; I was not strong enough to lift it all. The jack simply wasn’t designed for that much weight. “No big deal,” I thought. “I just have to detach the trailer before jacking the truck.”
The trailer had its own jack, of course, permanently attached to the tongue, used to lift it on and off a hitch ball. I had used it several times already and it worked great. It was obviously well-maintained by U-Haul, so I anticipated no problems. I swung it down into position and began cranking. A few quick spins of the handle brought the base of the jack into contact with the asphalt, another spin took the load and then…nothing. I couldn’t turn it any further, either! It didn’t take me as long this time to realize that just as the truck was too heavy to lift with the trailer attached, the trailer was too heavy for its jack to raise the tongue off the truck’s hitch ball.
“Well, hell,” I muttered dejectedly. “I’m going to have to take the van off the trailer.”
Next thing I knew I had involuntarily retreated to the only place within an acre that had any shade—the pickup’s bench seat. I laid on my back staring dejectedly at the ceiling, paralyzed with the overwhelming enormity of what I must do to get the van off the trailer, and wondering what I had done to piss off the gods. I was pretty sure somehow the Canadians had something to do with it. (Perhaps I shouldn’t have tossed their books on the ground….)
I reviewed in my head how long it had taken TWO of us to dig out a crawlway from the van’s tailgate to the driver’s seat–and to put it all back. I allowed myself an admittedly optimistic estimate of how long it would take to do it alone: “Let’s, see…it’s 1:15 now. Forty-five minutes to clear a crawlway in the van, drive it off the trailer and detach the trailer from the truck, 30 minutes to change the wheel, another 45 minutes to re-attach the trailer and reload the van,” I calculated. “That would put the time at say, 3:30. Another 30 minutes to load all the stuff back into the cab of the pickup would put me around 4:00. Say…another hour and a half to find a tire place and have them exchange the spare for an E-series tire, and that puts me at 5:30. I could still get to Bohanan’s in San Antonio by 9:30.” I was pretty sure that they didn’t closed until 10:00 pm, so I was still good, reservation or not. If I hustled and didn’t run into any more unexpected problems, I could still make it.
Reinvigorated by the hope that my hard work might yet be rewarded by a huge, savory piece of Texas beef, I sat up, took a deep, determined breath, and headed to the rear of the trailer. I pulled out the sliding ramps, climbed onto to the trailer, unlocked the van’s tailgate, and swung it open.
In my haste, I was utterly unprepared for the furnace-blast of air that rushed out of the van and hit me squarely in the face. Instinctively jerking back from the broiling air, my feet missed both ramps, and I stumbled backwards off the edge of the trailer. Twisting and rolling to try to cushion the fall, I ended up coming to a rest on my left side on the ground, my arm underneath me. I was experiencing a lot of pain on my head and my arm. Dazed and wondering what, if anything, I had broken, I decided to assess my injuries before moving. But a sudden extreme pain in my left forearm made me realize with a howl that it was being burned on the blacktop, so I forced myself to my feet.
A glance at my now burned and very red forearm made it clear that this pain was going to be with me for a while. I also noticed that my left knee was skinned; a rivulet of blood was trickling toward my sock. I had also evidently hit my forehead on the ground during the fall because I could feel an abrasion and a small bump above my left eye. Some water to clean the wounds would have been nice, but all things considered, the fall could have been much worse. Trying to ignore the pain, I gingerly climbed back onto the trailer and began unloading the van.
For each load, I climbed onto the back of the trailer, then crawled into the van on my belly, retrieved a piece of cargo, slithered backwards out of the van dragging the load in front of me, carefully exited the van (making sure my feet found the ramps to avoid a repeat fall), climbed down off the trailer, and deposited the piece of cargo onto a heap (whose size eventually exceeded that of the pile next to the pickup), then back up onto the trailer for the next sortie, each time a bit further inside the van.
Because I could not lower any of the van windows nor open the doors, the greenhouse was having maximum effect inside the van on this baking, sun-drenched day. The further into the van I dug, the more oppressive the heat. There was no doubt in my mind now that the gods were involved because I was surely in some kind of purgatory. My burned arm had begun to throb, and I winced in pain every time it brushed up against something. My scraped knee stung as I dragged it along, leaving a smear of blood along the top of the cargo that served as the floor of my tunnel. I was sweating so much that my eyes were stinging, things were constantly slipping from my hands, and my clothes were thoroughly soaked—evidence, I hoped, that at least, in all of this, my sins were being purged.
As I penetrated further and further into the bowels of the van, out came box after box of heavy goods: books, food, tools. Then a stereo system and speakers, two huge yard planters (full of soil), and a desk chair. As my tunnel finally breached the cockpit, I grabbed the last book box from the driver’s seat and headed with it backwards out the tunnel. As I was exiting the van and stepping down off one of the ramps, the box partially slipped from my wet hands. As I desperately grabbed at it, the box split open, spilling 20 Time Life books all over the pavement. Feeling very frustrated, I sighed, bent down to pick one up, and read its spine: The Canadians.
“That fucking figures,” I grumbled. But, here at last was my chance to see just what about Canada could justify a Time-Life Book series. I gathered them up and read a few of their titles as I put them back into the broken box:
- Canadian Insects
- Bell Towers of Canada
- Rodents of Canada
- Canadian Maple Syrups
- Topsoils of Canada
- Newfoundland Seal & Walrus Delicacies
“Oh my God! I KNEW it!” I cried, as I tossed the rest of the books into the box, unread. I decided right then and there that The Canadians would NOT be making the rest of the trip with me.
Two more sorties finally had the tunnel from the cockpit to the tailgate cleared out, so I slithered up into the driver’s seat, started the van, put it in reverse, gave it some gas…but nothing happened. A bit more gas and…still nothing. It wouldn’t budge. “Oh, hell!’ I remembered. “The chains and tire straps!” I crawled all the way backwards out of the van yet again, removed the trailer’s safety chains and tire straps, wriggled through the tunnel back into the front seat, and finally succeeded in backing the van off the trailer and onto the pavement. This time, I could exit out the driver’s door.
Returning to the hitch, and a few cranks later the trailer tongue easily lifted off the truck’s hitch ball. I removed the electrical wiring, the brake chains, and the safety chains then pushed the trailer back away from the truck. Done! I wiped the stinging sweat from my eyes again with the Tom Petty shirt that was still lying on the ground and glanced at my watch. It was 2:00 pm. Right on schedule. Now, to the tire jack.
It was waiting patiently where I had left it almost an hour ago, tucked under the frame’s strongpoint. With high expectations, I grasped the jack handle and began cranking, relieved to see the truck finally beginning to rise. But, my hopes were soon dashed. As the jack began to take the full weight of the truck, it began warping, the scissors mechanism bulging out sideways in a very disturbing manner. It was clear that if I were to continue, the jack would fail, likely in a catastrophic way. It evidently was not designed to handle the weight of the (admittedly heavy) cargo in the bed of the truck.
Holding back an unexpected and embarrassing urge to burst into tears, I realized that I was now going to have to remove a significant amount of cargo from the back of the pickup. “Hold it together,” I encouraged myself. “This won’t take too long,” I lowered the truck to take the load off the jack, opened the tailgate, and began unloading. I pulled out the cases of canned food, DVD boxes, dishes, cast iron pots and pans, the dumbbells and barbells and piled them behind the pickup. With all the household goods strewn all over the pavement, it must have looked to the passing drivers like I was a squatter claiming this freeway exit as my own. “No matter,” I thought. “It will soon all be loaded back into the vehicles, and the only evidence I was ever here will be a couple boxes containing a certain Time-Life Books series.”
Evaluating the latest pile, I estimated it to be about 400 pound’s worth. “Okay, let’s give it a shot,” I said to myself, as I returned to the jack with some trepidation. Holding my breath, I cautiously cranked the handle while observing the scissors jack for signs of warping. It was easier to spin this time which gave me hope. I continued cranking until the wheel cleared the ground, the jack showing no problem. Finally!
Compared to everything else that had happened in the last couple of hours, changing the wheel was quick and straightforward. In 10 minutes I had the spare wheel on, the damaged wheel back tucked up under the truck bed, and the truck off the jack. Now it was simply a matter of loading everything back into the vehicles. Unloading the cargo from the truck bed had only delayed me about 15 minutes. Another unplanned 15 minutes to put it all back would only add a total of 30 minutes to my schedule. It was 2:30 pm. Assuming I would have no problems reloading all the cargo, it was now down to how long it would take me to find a tire place and for them to change out the spare.
At this point, I was beginning to feel faint. I hadn’t eaten anything for almost nine hours and was dehydrated. I could feel lethargy setting in. Subconsciously understanding that I needed the hope of something to help me to push through almost total physical depletion, in my mind that porterhouse steak now became my Holy Grail, a sacred object to be obtained at all cost. With now a divine sense of purpose, and with the end, if not in sight, then at least around the next corner, I set about reloading all the cargo in reverse order. In 15 minutes, I had the exercise equipment, food, DVDs and cooking items back in the bed of the truck. To these I added the jack and accessories instead of returning them under the truck bench seat (just in case).
I re-attached the trailer to the truck, drove the van back onto the trailer, and secured it with the chains and tire straps, then slithered out the tunnel.
Loading the van was next. Refusing to reflect on how difficult and miserable a task it was going to be (pushing everything in front of me would be harder than dragging it behind me), I jumped into the job with what little gusto I had left. In, out, down, up. Sortie after sortie, load after load, filling in the tunnel I had so laboriously mined only a short while ago. Now in the heat of the afternoon, the van was even hotter than before, but for some reason I didn’t seem to notice. I was having a hard time concentrating on anything, moving robotically in, out, down, up. In fact, I don’t remember a whole lot about reloading the van.
Except for the cow. At one point while making my 10th (or 25th) passage up the van tunnel, I distinctly remember noticing through the windshield a cow approaching the van. I hadn’t observed anything live near this exit until now, but here was a cow, coming purposefully right up to the nose of the van. A suspiciously tender and delicious-looking cow, as a matter of fact. I tried to ignore it and concentrate on my task at hand, realizing I was slipping in and out of reality. But when it started talking to me, that became impossible. In my dehydrated, half-delusional state, I suddenly found myself in Douglas Adams’ Restaurant at the End of the Universe listening to the cow say, “Good Afternoon. I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in the parts of my body, especially the lower rib section?”
“Jeez, I’m in a bad state,” I realized, shaking off the cow dream as I finished cramming the last piece of cargo into the van. “I need relief from this heat or they’re going to find me dead on the side of the road.” So, I locked up the van, slid the ramps back into their slots on the trailer, and allowed myself 10 refreshing minutes of maximum AC in the pickup. Then it was back to work for the quest for the Holy Steak. I took note of the time: 3:15 pm.
I began loading the pile of 50-lb. book boxes into the back seat of the truck. After my break, I started out strong, but when I was just over halfway through, I could feel my strength fading again. It was now a major effort to move each box, and there were a couple of times when I seriously considered leaving more than just The Canadiansbehind me on the pavement. “Would anyone ever read all these books!?! What are we, some kind of library? Isn’t all this on the web nowadays?” But, in spite of my grumblings, I persisted, buoyed by the fact that I was now doing God’s work, and managed to reload the entire pickup cab. I was done! Finally!
I half stumbled, half walked around the rig making a final inspection to ensure everything was secure, and nothing had been left behind. Except for the two boxes of The Canadians, everything was loaded. I pulled myself into the pickup, started the engine, cranked up the AC, and looked at the time. It was 4:30 pm. I had about two hours and 15 minutes to find a tire place, get the tire changed, and get back on the road to San Antonio if I was going to make it to Brohanans before they closed.
I cautiously merged back onto I-10 and headed west. I found myself dozing off–the lack of food and water and four and a half-hours’ worth of hard work in the stifling heat were taking their toll. I prayed that there would be some kind of a tire place at the next exit, which was just a few miles down the road.
As I approached the exit, I noticed a Walmart on the other side of the freeway, and realized that if it were a Supercenter, it might have an auto shop which might have the E-series tire I needed. Passing abeam it, I could clearly see that it was indeed a Supercenter, so I took the exit. As I worked my way through a couple of stop lights toward the Walmart, I could see there was a “Walmart Auto Care Center” around the back. Bingo! I’ve never been so happy (before or since) to see a Walmart! “Hopefully they have the right tire and can put it on in a timely manner.”
I worked my way into the parking lot, around to the back of the building, and pulled up in front of one of the empty Auto Care Center stalls. I could see a lot of tires on racks. That was a good sign. I was starting to have a good feeling about this. The truck’s clock said it was 4:47.
I got out of the truck as the manager came out to greet me. I told him about the flat, and that I needed it replaced by an E-series tire if they had one. The guy said he would check, noted the specifications on one of the other E-series tires, and went back into the shop to check the inventory.
I decided to take advantage of the wait by staggering over to the water fountain I noticed in the corner of the shop. After quaffing what had to be two gallons of luxuriously cool water, I headed back toward the truck and trailer, already feeling much better.
As I passed by a large, plate glass window looking into the store, I could clearly see my reflection in it and stopped cold at the spectacle. I looked like shit! Not only were my soaked clothes very dirty and just hanging off me, I had a big welt over one of my eyes, dried blood on my leg, and a red and burnt arm. But my most noticeable feature was that my face was smeared black! I was confused for a second until I realized that I had twice wiped my sweaty face with the Tom Petty t-shirt that I had been kneeling on in the hot asphalt. Geez, what must the manager have thought when he was talking with me?
But, despite my ragged appearance, I was quite happy. I had accomplished a very miserable and challenging task in extremely demanding conditions and had survived. My thirst was quenched, and changing the tire shouldn’t take these professionals long. My timetable was still looking good to make San Antonio, take that cow up on its offer, and dive into a wondrously huge porterhouse steak before the day was over. As long as they had the right tire, everything would be fine.
After a couple of minutes, the manager returned with great news, “You’re in luck! We have the exact same tire in stock and there’s no one in front of you, so it should only take us about 15 minutes to install. But, you’re going to have to take the trailer off the truck before we can do anything.”
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooo………!
I did have beef for dinner that night, but it was in the form of a McDonald’s quarter pounder. Bohanans wouldn’t have let me in, anyway.