264/365

We really shouldn't be, maybe we really aren't, surprised anymore when one of our tires loses its umphf and sits deflated. Flat tires have become commonplace here. I am sure that I have experienced more flat tires since moving to the border than in all of my life up to that point. There was that one time I was driving down the road and thought that the nice people were pulling up to tell me that my gas door was open. No. That was a flat tire. There have been dramatic and sudden blowouts at full speed on the highway. I have heard the hum and then the slow whompwhompwhomp of the tire gradually becoming flat until question ourselves, is it?, and then we can deny it no longer. And then there have been the days when we walk out to the car and the tire is flat. Today was one of those days.

I should confess, I still haven't changed my own tire. I count that as all grace. Always so far, some hero guy appears, usually but not always my husband, willing to get his hands black and his pants dusty dirty. I know where the jack is, but I've never had to slide it under the car or crank it up. My job is to hold the bolts and to line up the tire to see if the jack has lifted the car high enough. I try to touch the tire only with my fingertips and I try not to touch my clothes or my face. Somehow the black smudge of rubber finds its way to mark me anyway. Sometimes I have waved at oncoming traffic, so that the cars and trucks headed our way don't get too close to the car, or to the guy underneath the car. That is a worrisome job.

Now I have tire guys. I know of the tire shop in Hidalgo and of the tire guy down the street and around the corner in Reynosa. I first met the tire guy on Harrison in Harlingen, but sadly, his shop burned in a black smoky fire. Now I visit the tire guy off the Loop in Harlingen. He's friendly and trustworthy and reliable. He charges $6 to take off a tire, repair it, and put it back, and does it in less than 10 minutes. I sit and listen to the air pump and the whine of taking off the bolts like some NASCAR pit crew might do. He wrestles the tire into the old bathtub and discovers the hole, usually the fault of a nail. He rolls the tire over to the equipment to repair it, and then he exchanges the tires and he replaces the spare back to its rightful position on the back of the car.

When flat tires become part of normal.
We'll talk about windshields another day...