Holidays don't always turn out as planned....

Home For Christmas, or Some Days Nothing Goes Right


Actually the day went quite well. It was on the evening of Friday, December 23 that things started to go wrong. Since the library would be closed on Christmas Eve, and Saturday was a short day anyway, we closed two hours early on Friday evening to make up the full holiday. Closing at 4:30 suited me well. It would give me plenty of time to load my vehicle and make the two-hour-plus drive home in time for supper. My brother and his three daughters were also headed to Mom and Dad’s house for Christmas. I figured they wouldn’t be there until 10:00 p.m. or later.

I had quite a bit to load, what with clothes for several days and presents that I was taking. After loading I took a last walk around to make sure the vehicle was ready to the journey. That’s when I noticed that the right rear tire was as flat as a pancake. Somehow I had picked up a nail or something on the brief trip downtown to attend the Rotary Club lunch the day before.

I had a spare, but it was a doughnut spare—not really suitable for a trip of well over a hundred miles that included a stretch of express highway. Besides, the Jeep Cherokee was a loaner from Mom and Dad. I didn’t remember where the jack was kept!

I called home. Mom answered. Incredibly, my brother and his girls had already arrived! He had managed to get them up and packed and on the road in the wee hours of the morning (He’s not an Army NCO for nothing!). Dad was out fetching pizza for everybody. Hearing that they were all home made me want to get home worse than ever. It wasn’t clear now how I would make it.

Dad got back home in a few minutes and heard out my dilemma over the phone. We discussed the prospects of my getting the flat tire repaired. I lived in a small town with only a couple of places that could service a tire. They were already closed for the evening. The next day was both a Saturday and Christmas Eve. It didn’t look good.

Dad decided that I could make it home on that doughnut spare if I put it on the right front wheel and carefully restricted my speed. This meant that I would have to change the right front tire first, then move the good tire to the right rear wheel. Dad also reminded me that the jack was kept under the right rear seat. I had my work cut out for me.

First I had to figure out where to put the jack. My previous tire-changing experience had been with small cars that you jacked up from the side. But there was no place on the side of the high-clearance Jeep where the little jack could reach. I ran it all the way out and it still hadn’t even reached the bottom of the chassis. I called Dad again. He informed me that on a vehicle like that you put the jack up under axle. I found the correct spot and began raising the Jeep.

It took a while. The jack handle was made in two pieces hinged together. The thing hadn’t been used in who knew how long and took a good spray of WD-40 to loosen. Then I had to work the awkward handle for scores of turns to raise the wheel.

Of course first--and by now I was working in the dark, by the gleam of a street light--I had to loosen the lug nuts. I didn’t have the strength to break some of them loose. So I positioned the lug wrench just so and stood up on top of it. My weight proved insufficient—as Dad had observed back when I was a teenager, I lack much “hold-down power”. I all but had to dance on the end of the wrench to break the toughest nuts loose. It was just as well that I was working in the dark where nobody could see me.

Eventually I got the right front tire off and bolted the doughnut spare on. Then I lowered the Jeep. And lowered, and lowered, until it became apparent that the long-disused spare had gradually become flat as well.

Now what? I called home once again. This time Dad bowed to the inevitable and said he’d come get me. He’d be there in a little over two hours.

I still had work to do. First I put the right front tire back on. Then I repositioned the jack and laboriously broke loose the right rear lug nuts using the same method as before. I took the bad tire off and placed the doughnut spare on to give the Jeep something to rest on. I was pretty tired by the time I had all that done. In my youth, when I helped Dad and my brother in the family masonry business in the summer, I’d have had little trouble manhandling the big SUV tires. The sedentary library life had taken its toll.

Then I went inside and sat down to wait. I’d turned the heat off in anticipation of being gone for several days, so I sat bundled in my jacket. I hated to be missing time with my family. Still, I felt thankful that the tire had gone flat in my driveway instead of leaving me stranded at night in the middle of nowhere.

I knew who it had to be when I heard somebody pull into the driveway. Sure enough, I recognized the smaller and more fuel-efficient of Dad’s two elderly pickups (All of Dad’s vehicles are elderly. He has a reputation around town for buying used vehicles and making them last). “Are you the one that called for the taxi?” he called cheerfully.

We got my luggage and presents loaded in the bed of the pickup under a tarp and placed the Jeep’s faulty wheel on top of it to keep it in place. And away we went. Dad informed me that he had found a used vehicle for sale that he’d like for me to check out. I readily agreed to look at it. After more than three years of borrowing assorted patched-up loaners I was ready to invest my savings in a four-wheeled vehicle I could actually own.

Some way down the road we stopped at one of the few handy convenience stores along the way and got corndogs for a late supper. Dad observed that the smell of mustard on the warm corndogs reminded him of long-ago dates with Mom.

The trip proved uneventful. The only mishap was my discovery that the bottle of water I had gotten when we stopped was actually artificially flavored water. My mouth had an awful aftertaste the rest of the way home. It didn’t matter much, though. I was going home.

*Brotoro checks his calendar*