False Alarm for a Flat Tire

[Briar Lee]

I’m finishing one last probate estate and after a triumphant victory at the courthouse (I do very well when I’m the only lawyer in the case) and it is likely the last time I put on the suit and tie and carry my forty year old Orvis briefcase to be somebody’s chosen champion.

Afterwards I got my hair cut and was delighted to see my late son’s seventh grade football coach who regaled the barber shop crowd with true legends of my narrow escape when I fell off my boat in the middle of a forty acre lake and swam on my back to shore with my son screaming on the bank. Also when my son (who was physically disabled, born without radius bones in both arms) being the best defensive nose guard he ever coached and sacking the quarterback at Warsaw the first time he played him (and when I would have never played my own son in such a tight game). When our side won, the boy ran straight over to my mother who was running across the field to hug him. And how after each game my mother and I would sing and entertain at my home on the hilltop.

And he looked at me and said they are now somewhere watching you, in what may be your last day in the mines.

Dave Dudley

Last Day in the Mines

With my head swollen large from such flattery I stopped by a new tobacco shop in town and bought some Red Buoy (and noticed he had more Buoy Gold than any other brand on his racks) and my wife was still asleep, but I texted her asking what she wanted from the BBQ joint the next town over, 11 miles away.

At 70 miles an hour in stifling heat on a sweeping right hand turn my low tire indicator on the left rear lit up and I lifted the throttle and watched it plunge from 32 pounds to 25 to 16 to 5 to 0.

The tire was still on the rim and my tire shop was only a mile the same way I came on a little used road. I drove it there 20 miles an hour, hoping the tire would stay on the rim.

It was a false alarm—-a bad sensor.





They didn’t even charge me, and one worker bragged how he’d changed the tires on every Lincoln, Cadillac and Chrysler I’d ever had.

And off I drove for BBQ, and when I got home my wife woke up and I’m smoking Buoy Red and having a wonderful day.

Whatever happened, to flat tires?

I’ve not had one since my wife was asleep in my 1994 Lincoln Mark VIII and we were running 90 miles an hour out in South Dakota on a sweeping left hand turn, and I heard the right rear pop. The tire didn’t leave the rim and I patched the nail hole in it myself with a kit I bought at a service station a mile away. We drove to Mitchell where I bought four new tires, in 2001.

Since they required tire alarms, there don’t seem to be any honest to God flat tires, only occasionally slow leaks you get fixed.

Saved a bunch of people to live to enjoy retirement, you know?

 

[huntertrw]

Briar Lee:

Congratulations, Sir! I recall hearing Evangelist Ed Bousman once say on his radio program that there is no such thing as a retired Christian. If I may be so bold, allow to extend that by saying that there's probably no such thing as a retired attorney, either.

Just imagine: You could do pro bono work for the deserving, take only the for-fee cases that you find to be truly interesting, and still have plenty of time to enjoy your pipes! Now that sounds like an enjoyable retirement.

With regard to the active Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) built into most of today's automobiles, the fact that the sensors in each wheel detect even a small a deviation from the target pressure in any of the tires is what prevents their overheating with resultant blow-outs, de-rimming, etc.

 

[lraisch]

When I replaced all four tires on my car last, there was a charge to (rebuild TPMS sensors). Turns out that just meant replacing the valve core, like I used to do when I worked at a gas station in 1968.
Apparently, those sensors do go bad. Also, the generic sensors they installed could not be programmed to work with a Toyota. The tire shop was good enough to send someone out to get the OEM sensors and replace the generics without charging me anything other than the cost difference for the parts.

 

[ziv]

When I replaced all four tires on my car last, there was a charge to (rebuild TPMS sensors). Turns out that just meant replacing the valve core, like I used to do when I worked at a gas station in 1968.
Apparently, those sensors do go bad. Also, the generic sensors they installed could not be programmed to work with a Toyota. The tire shop was good enough to send someone out to get the OEM sensors and replace the generics without charging me anything other than the cost difference for the parts.

I don't think the sensors themselves go bad, but the batteries in them certainly do. Expect to replace them after 10 years or so.

Toyota TPMS sensors are trickier than some others - you need to program the new sensor with a special tool to make the computer recognize it.

 

[BingBong]

I don't think the sensors themselves go bad, but the batteries in them certainly do. Expect to replace them after 10 years or so.

Toyota TPMS sensors are trickier than some others - you need to program the new sensor with a special tool to make the computer recognize it.

TPMS = Tyre Sensor Machiavellian Sorcery.

 

[Briar Lee]

Johnny and I were 16 years old and headed to the Ozark Empire Fair on August 8, 1974 debating whether or not Nixon would resign and listening to KWTO in my 1966 Mustang 289 on a sweltering August day.

Our school had installed a large brand new color television at the start of the 1973 school year and our teachers had made us watch the Watergate Hearings

Watergate Blues
Tom T Hall 1973

So we didn’t debate Tricky Dick’s guilt, which was beyond any discussion but whether he’d resign or call out troops to cling to office.

My $5 said Nixon was a soul lost out to hell and beyond any hope of salvation and would burn down the country to ashes first and Johnny took my bet, and said there still burned a spark of good in Nixon and he’d resign.

Just before Nobel Hill on Old 13 in 1974 there was a long sweeping right hand curve and my left rear tire completely blew out and left the rim. My Mustang fishtailed left and I steered into it to correct and looked out my passenger window to see an oncoming truck who steered onto the shoulder on his side for me to go past and slowly my car straightened up and I pumped the brakes and wound up on the right shoulder.

But our troubles were not over. It was a narrow shoulder and cars were a solid line behind us going to the fair. The flat was on the driver’s side.

Ahead aways, was a gravel road intersecting 13, and I limped down there and got off the road where we could change it.

About then KWTO news announced Nixon would resign the next day.

Johnny said let me contribute your $5 to the Mustang tire replacement fund.

I said no, I’m paying your way into the fair.

If such a no account liar as Nixon can do the right thing when he’s absolutely cornered, I can keep my word in the first place.

And right about then Melba Montgomery started singing over KWTO

No Charge

And not until then, did I consider how Mama would have handled the news, if that truck driver hadn’t been paying attention. I went to the fair and beat the Machine Guns and took Mama home a huge teddy bear.

I’d nearly forgotten that story until my friend Billy who was in the back seat told it at my son’s funeral.

I’d paid Billy’s way into the fair, too.

But I was stuffed with money from working a boat dock all summer. It’s easy to be generous when you can afford to be, you know?

 

[lraisch]

I know I've told stories about my brief time doing road service on the New Jersey turnpike, but this is one I'll never forget.

A summer Sunday and lots of shore traffic, so I'm driving the road service truck on patrol. I see a brand-new Buick with a flat left front tire stopped on the center median. Four folks in their Sunday best clothes looking at the flat. I put my lights on and stopped to offer help, but they were having none of it. They seemed to think I was trying to rip them off or something.

I would probably have radioed to the state cops to stop the traffic so the car could be moved to the right shoulder, especially because the car was on a considerable slope to the left, but they weren't interested.

About 15 minutes later, I was driving back the other way when I see these folks looking somewhat lost.

They had used the bumper jack (remember those?) not on the bumper (which might have been unsafe anyway given the way the car was leaning on that slope) but in the wheel well!

I don't know how they figured they would get the wheel off since the jack was right in front of it, but what they succeeded in doing was tearing a strip of sheet metal out of the fender about 6 inches long. The fender was curled up like someone had taken a can opener to it.

The charge to change the tire for them would have been $6.

 

[huntertrw]

During college I dated a co-ed who drove a beautiful Camaro Berlinetta. After dinner in the cafeteria one day we were walking across the student parking lot back to our dormitories when she noticed that the right-front tire was flat and began to cry. Trying to be gallant I told her that I would install the spare.

After jacking the car and removing the wheel I was horrified to see that it began to roll backward (it had a standard transmission and I neglected to make certain that the parking brake was set). Despite my Herculean efforts the wheel hub hit the ground with a noise I will never forget, together with her cry of "Oh, no!"

It took considerable effort to get the car back on the jack and then install the spare. Needless to say, the noise that subsequently came from the wheel hub sounded expensive and, indeed, proved to be so for me.

I've never jacked-up (either literally or figuratively) a Camaro since.

 

[ssjones]

I've driven over a million work miles and have had two flat tires in that time. Both on 90 degree plus days.

My Lincoln MKZ, it had 18" steamroller sized tires. I hit a piece of metal and blew out the sidewall. I pulled over, jacked it up, removed the tire and put on the spare. I went to get the blown tire and couldn't find it. I looked 100 yards down this slight incline and yet, it was laying in the median of a four-lane highway. Somehow it crossed two lanes at 5 Pm rush hour (Toms River NJ) and didn't hit anything.

 

[huntertrw]

Gomer Pyle opines on flat tires,

 

[Briar Lee]

The tire replacement and servicing trade of August 1974 in the little dairy town of Humansville consisted first of Junior Watt, owner of Phillips 66, who had a prime location next to the Shady Nook Cafe, the Community Building, Dr Robinson’s Hospital, and in view of all the stores on our Main Street. Junior was after Lionel Kear and Doctor Robinson our most wealthy citizen and he smoked expensive Roi Tan cigars. His wife was said to be a beauty in her youth but then served as a caution to young girls of how to not become addicted to registered quarter horses lest they get tanned as a piece of saddle leather and bowl legged with a broad behind by the time they were only fifty or so.

Junior catered to the carriage trade of cars and light pickups. The big trucks and tractors and farm equipment were serviced by four gasoline stations further down the hill towards the race track, owned by Alva Rains, Hap Rimey, Dopey Piper, and at the very bottom of the hill Roy Kelley.

Junior Watt set the price of gasoline each morning at the Shady Nook Cafe with him being two cents a gallon more than Alva Rains and Alva knew all the stations further down the hill would match him.

Over the years Junior and Alva had used their superior market power to make true Christian believers out of their three competitors further down the hill.

If they strayed, Alva and Junior would set Junior’s price two cents above cost and the three lower tier stations would be pumping gas for the pleasure of of it until they allowed Alva to make two cents a gallon.


My mother, and other fashionable ladies of the town would only use Junior Watt’s station and no other.

Junior kept one or two mechanics and at least two attendants all dressed in spotless white uniforms Freda washed clean and ironed day and if they got greasy they had to change. Junior had no loafing spot for customers and didn’t need one, all the cafes and beauty shops and barber shops were in full view of his corner station. He did not sell recaps and had no pile of used tires for sale, never repaired split rims or patched tube tires or dealt with anything but modern tubeless tires.There would never be one gallon of gas pumped by any customer at Junior’s station and the attendants swarmed the car to check all the fluids and tire pressure.

And in those days, you didn’t need to price tires, either. If you wanted used tires or recaps Roy Kelley sold those at his one man station at the bottom of the hill, and price and quality increased as you went up the hill.

At a cost of about two hundred 1974 dollars my mother had bought five brand new tires for my $700 Mustang that I had paid for in April 1974 at Junior Watt’s.

And on the day after my blowout on the way to the fair I had a decision.

I had not bought gasoline af Junior Watts, to save two cents a gallon. If I had done so, my road hazard and tread wear warranty on my $40 apiece new tires would have been honored without question while I waited at the Shady Nook.

As it was my new tires had most of the tread spun off from street racing and I knew Freda Watt would love nothing better to spread that news to every matron in Humansville who envied her home on the hilltop and her registered quarter horses so instead I went down the hill one station to Alva Rains.

If I am a storyteller I will never be able to hold up a dim candle to Alva Rains, the master of all storytellers that ever came from Humansville.

I knew that in November of 1918 when my father’s family was deathly sick with the flu they dispatched their 13 year old hired boy Alva Rains on their best jumper to ride to Humansville for a doctor, who refused to come to that home so stricken by the Spanish Flu.

And Alva was there in 1918, when they laid my great grandmother to her rest in Plum Grove, across from the comfortable home Alva then had on his hilltop. He was there in 1920 when my great grandfather died a year and a half of sickness from the flu. He was there in 1952 for my grandfather and in 1960 for my Mammy and in 1971 for my Daddy, as well, at Plum Grove.

Alva smoked Rum Crooks, was always happy to see me, looked at my tires and said I’ll sell you four brand new ones and we’ll use your good one for a spare for a hundred dollar bill cash money so’s the gubbermint and my wife don’t have to know nothing about this minor matter, if you won’t tell nobody Alva Rains sold you a hundred and sixty dollars worth of new tires at cost. I’ve kept the secret until now.:

Here is what’s wrong with selling tires in 2025 in America.

The tire I thought had went flat yesterday, cost $100 installed last fall brand new.




The value of $100 today and in 1974



Alva and Junior Watt were selling $25 tires for $40 that widowed school teachers needed replaced every ten thousand miles or so.

And widowed school teachers in 1974 were driving big land boats that might get ten miles per gallon in everyday service, and needed filled every 160 miles or so when they were at a quarter tank, at about 58 cents a gallon at Alva’s and 60 cents at Junior’s.

Last night gas was $2.90 cents (nominally $2.899) and there was only one attendant at the resister selling whiskey and beer and cold drinks and lottery tickets and most gasoline was paid my plastic at the pump.




I had a girlfriend the summer of 1974, a blonde with a deeper tan than Freda Watt without any miles on horses on her at all.

I drove straight over to Cliqout to see her and her parents, who were always so glad to see me, and I filled up my Mustang at a station there that had the old style gas pumps that the attendent filled up to ten gallons in a glass reservoir on top, and gravity fed it into the car’s tank. He also sold cherry bombs and M-80’s for a quarter each, and I bought five dollars worth for Betty to light and toss under culverts as we patrolled the back roads, then went to the drive in movie at Bolivar, the day Nixon actually resigned.

Although I seldom ever drew from it, that summer the Social Security Administration paid my mother $75 a month as survivors benefits because of all those cows my father had milked, and paid his taxes for. That would almost be $500 today.



Almost three months later Betty and I were driving back to Cliqout when the announcer came on KWTO and said

President Ford today did (such and so)

And Betty said who is President Ford?

Nixon is the President.

(Silence)

Isn’t Nixon the President?

(Betty scoots over towards her door)

Well Betty, President Nixon resigned on August 9th, which elevated Vice President Gerald Ford to be the President.


It was quite a big stir in the news at the time.

And she said I’ve been so busy cheerleading I can’t keep up with things like that.


Then she started crying and said I was too smart for her to ever keep and I lied and said it wasn’t so.

Here’s to you Betty, who’s a beautiful and glamorous grandma today, somewhere.

Back When Gas Was Thirty Cents a Gallon

 

[Sig]

My wifes stupid 2013 Nissan Rouge has the MOST sensitive tire pressure sensors I've ever seen.
The manual says 32-40 pounds. The tire light comes on at 30. In the winter I like running them at 30, it gets better traction. This is a decades old thing in the far north. Slightly flatter tire = more tread contact.
I really hate talking crap about the Rouge. It has 180,000 miles and never had a single issue. Tires, brakes, oil, oil pan cover, front wheel bearings, battery.....thats it in 12 years and 180,000 miles.....it does need some shocks/struts soon.
But, the stupid tire light is annoying.
And no, it does not have its own fuse. Its on the cluster fuse, if pulled, no dash lights at all!!

 

[ziv]

And no, it does not have its own fuse. Its on the cluster fuse, if pulled, no dash lights at all!!

Use a piece of black tape

 

[Briar Lee]

Along life’s highway we meet many dangers but today less than 1% of the over 40,000 people killed each year in car crashes go to meet the Master because of tire failure.

And of those, every car since 1994 has had an onboard diagnostics computer that will tell investigators if the operator ignored tire monitor warnings, required for twenty years now.

But the car makers and tire makers and their regulators cannot protect us from all road way hazards.

My first son, born to my first wife and me in 1986 had bilateral radial aplasia and because my wife had gold plated school teacher insurance, courtesy of the Missouri State Teacher’s Association, with the help of the school’s insurance agent we flew to Dallas Texas and we referred to the best pediatric hand clinic on the planet earth.

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My son had about a dozen surgical procedures on his hands before his second birthday, all of them on an outpatient basis, where we would drive 425 miles on Friday to Louisville and stay overnight for $25 at the luxurious Downtown Holiday Inn.

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He’d be admitted at six am Saturday for the procedures and released at five minutes before six the next morning so it was technically out patient surgery.

They made our son opposable thumbs from his index fingers. Ever since then, I know doctors are a lot smarter than us lawyers, plus good ones work on Saturdays, too.

East St Louis then and today is an economic war zone, more devastated than present day Humansville, plus they have lots of crime and degradation on top of the poverty.




Coming back home, just past Exit Six on I-64, traffic bumper to bumper, cold and dreary winter’s day, dark coming, my wife asleep leaned back in her seat, my toddler son with an arm cast in his baby seat behind me—-

A piece of angle iron on the highway I never saw somehow flipped over just so, and it went through the floor behind my seat and angled up where my son woke up, saw it, and laughed and tried to grab it with his arm that wasn’t in a cast.

His mother woke up screaming and said oh my God my God pull over and I said—

We just passed Larry Flint’s Hustler Club back there aways. Remember the last time we got lost in East St Louis?

——

Vacation - East St Louis Scene

——

With sparks leaving a trail from the bottom on the angle iron whichever bridge they had open then to St Louis was a beautiful sight.

By the heavily patrolled St. Louis arch I stopped at a Donut Shop I knew would be crawling with cops and took my trusty hacksaw out of my tool box in the truck and sawed the angle iron in two and there was just an L in the carpet and mat where it went through. I put the other mat over that one and went in to get myself a donut.

Hereditary heart disease took his mother at 56 and him at 36, both suddenly and with no warning.

But that angle iron speared up about the only place in that car, it could have missed all three of us.

None of us had a scratch that day, at least.

Life is Like a Mountain Railway