The Spare

It was raining up on Look Out Mountain one fine Saturday morning and I needed groceries so I loaded up (Well actually unloaded) the old VW bus and headed for town. As I was coming up on the intersection at Noccalula Falls I heard a pop and realized my left rear tire had gone flat. I pulled into the gas station at the intersection and got out to get the spare. Of course I realized then that I had no workable spare as I had noticed when taking it out this morning to make room for groceries that it had a large bulge on the side and was not likely to hold air much longer. Besides, I was ten miles down the mountain from where I had left it.

Thinking of who might come to my rescue on this cold wet Saturday morning I came up with my nephew Sam, so I gave him a call. Sam arrived in about twenty minutes with the grin that is perpetually found on his face and I thought how good it is to have family around when you need help. Sam couldn’t keep himself from pointing out that if I had a spare I wouldn’t have had to drag him away from watching Saturday morning cartoons with his daughter Hannah. I allowed as to how I was sorry and I really appreciated his coming out to help his poor old uncle. We discussed the options for a bit and decided that since the other tires were all new I should get another new one to replace the blown one.

Sam went to work jacking up the van and removing the tattered wheel. We put it in the back of his pickup and went into town to search for a like replacement. Once the new tire was purchased and mounted on the rim we headed back up the mountain and reversed the process to get the wheel back on the bus. While Sam was re-mounting the wheel I was standing up in front of the van and it wasn’t until he was letting it down off the jack that I realized what I had been leaning on… It was the vinyl cover of the spare tire mounted on the front of the bus.

Uncle Dave