In The Pit With BM/MB
A man said mister you got a flat tire on Sudley Rd. which was a surprise to me having just recently left the highway barreling down at seventy plus miles per hour. I nodded and said thanks man not realizing that to receive this news I had rolled the electric window all the way down and would therefore never see it up again without paying for a new window motor. I pulled immediately into a service station and began airing up the tire while trying to remember did I have anymore of that fix-a-flat or did I months ago give the last can to a woman in distress in Jersey City. I would soon realize it did not matter because for every pound of air I was pumping in 252 grams of it were seeping out. There were maybe 20 minutes to kill before my passengers being driven to the airport would begin to fret. I was determined to use considerably less than half of that and pulled the car over to a parking space and began barking orders. Bill Macy you need to get out of the back seat and when he hesitated I cried now Bill Macy, now! and I started throwing his bags into the back compartment to further punctuate the rare exclamation mark. Bill Macy was on the team now and stood ready in the pit, hoping I’m sure that he would not be called on to change out the head gasket, which luckily at this point in time was not the problem in question. I lifted up the bench seat on which moments earlier Bill Macy had been lazily sitting comtemplating self-flagellation with a baseball bat and began pulling out the tire changing tools stored there but which I had never before used on this vehicle. It sure was a little jack for such a large vehicle. The first lug wrench I tried seemed too large for the lugnuts and I cursed out loud a world populated by improper lug wrenches. There was another smaller lug wrench with a swivel head on a short handle and this I put over the first nut. Bending the handle to ninety degrees I then put my foot on it and standing up erect pumped down on the small wavering handle with all my inconsiderable weight and it made that cracking sound which shouldn’t be good but when changing a tire, is. I did this for every lugnut and then looked for a place to put the jack. Bernadette came out from the store attached to the service station from which she had been procurring cigarettes for her sister in NY who desires to pay less than nine dollars for a pack. She was a little concerned with my jack placement as it would seem I was setting myself up to be crushed by a Jeep in a service station off of Sudley Rd. She asked me if she should inquire inside about a real jack and in classic male dedication to any tool I chose to consider mine and which had not yet been proven a conclusive failure, I took slight offense to the question and assured her, without any real confidence, that this jack would work fine. Bill Macy, having uncovered and unsecured the spare tire in the back compartment, continued a posture of vigilance . After unsatisfactory progress with the short crank I procurred from under the seat the long folding crank but not of course before pinching my finger when unfolding it. The tire rose and I then removed the lugnuts and put them in Bill Macy’s outstretched hand. The clock ticked. Bernadette, my love, will you get me a bottle of water I said with more urgency than required and forgetting the my love part. But she got it anyway because she forgives me my frequent quirks of mood. Bill Macy grabbed the spare from the back and dropped it on my foot. No need for apologies I assured him, Jetblue awaits.
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