Of Flat tires and Faith

Flat tires have always seemed to be mysteriously attracted to me. Plain black ones, white-walled ones, heavy duty ones, truck ones, car ones--even replacement doughnut ones. But usually they're retread ones and bald ones. Gee... I think there's a correlation there somewhere. Unfortunately, for many years brain cells were NOT attracted to me, and it took a long time to figure that out.

Okay, to be fair to myself, I haven't personally had very many flat tires. Not on my own vehicles, anyway. I've just been lucky enough that when I've been riding with other people--mostly those who had an affinity for bald tires or retreads--my mere presence, like a cutting comment from the boss does to the uncertain employee, seemed to deflate every tire in sight. And I was left with the fallout.

I'm not making this up. On two separate occasions I am firmly convinced that my being in the vehicle made most of the tires on that vehicle go flat, along with at least one spare--and I'm not all that heavy! Once we were coming back from hunting, and it had turned into a cold, snowy day. We were about as far from the so-called civilized world of Big O's and Les Schwabses as we could get, tired and thirsty and hungry, when one of our spare tires went flat. That in itself would not have been a problem, of course. Spares being flat don't bother me. I mean, as long as there's no call to use them, if a spare is just sitting in the back of the truck and it's flat, big deal. Everyone needs to let off some steam now and then, I always say. No, the problem arose because the spares had already been put on my brother in law's pickup to replace the REGULAR tires--retreads--that had already mysteriously gone flat. Now that--THAT, my friends--IS a problem.

Luckily, at that point the flat tire was on the right side, and my brother in law was able to drive along on the shoulder and keep his nearly unprotected rim in the dirt until we got to the home of a friendly farmer and were saved.

But my story is about the first time I was in a car with those lovely retread tires. This is a story about faith in God, and in miracles. You might find humor somewhere in the rest of this tale. At the time, I didn't.

I was seventeen, and I had gone to stay with my sister Kandy in Salt Lake City, Utah. That was my first mistake. We lived in Shelley, Idaho, which is some two hundred miles or so away. Nothing big--as long as you're driving. Walking is another story. Kandy had three spare tires in the back of the blue 1972 Ford station wagon she had gotten from our daddy. A Ford. That was my second mistake--getting into a Ford. But I digress.

Anyway, I specifically remember those three spare tires, because I made such a big joke about them at the time. Ha, ha, ha. Why would anyone carry THREE spare times? Hardy har har. Kandy's answer? Well, you just never know what might happen. Better to be safe than sorry. Uh-um... Well, I'm here to tell you something, folkds. "Safe" with retreads does not mean three spare tires. Maybe four, five, six or seven. But not three.

To make a long story a tad shorter, in the next hour or two I got really good at changing tires. So good, in fact, that we were soon down to zer0--I said ZERO--spares. Now I was thankful Kandy had been smart enough to buy three spares. But my thankfulness didn't hold up--and flat tires' affinity for me did.

To those who are unfamiliar with this route, there is a pass called "Malad Pass" between Salt Lake and Shelley. For those of you who don't speak French, "Malad," spelled with an e on the end of it, means "sick." I'm not kidding. I soon learned there was a reason for that name. I was soon to become very sick.

We had started up this pass when I heard the strange thump-thump noise on the right front side of the car that I had grown way too used to by this time. The odd thing was, something told me to ignore it. I was sure what it was, and I was equally sure that if we didn't stop before long it was going to ruin not only whatever was left of that tire, but probably the rim of the wheel as well. But something just made me keep my mouth shut. I admit that I didn't have any big revelation from God telling me that He would protect me or anything sappy like that. I remember simply thinking, Hey, let's get over this huge mountain and on to the downhill side before I say anything stupid like, "Stop, Kandy, you're going to ruin your wheel!" So I didn't say anything. And oddly enough it was as if Kandy were deafened at the same time. I kept looking out the corner of my eye at her to see if she was hearing the same thump-thump that I was, but she had this blissful look of calm on her face like nothing in the world could upset her. Nothing like MY gut-wrenching feeling. I should note that as it turned out the tire was only going flat, not completely flat, so we did indeed have a few miles left on it.

Well, we went up and over Malad Pass, and the tire was still holding up. The thump was getting louder, but we were still moving. And Kandy still hadn't noticed anything was wrong. But even now, at the top of the pass, I couldn't speak. Or I wouldn't speak. Looking back, it literally seems that something was telling me very loudly and emphatically, but inside my own head, "Kirby, I'm warning you--SHUT UP! Smile and shut your stupid mouth--for once in your life." So I did.

And then it happened. We had made it all the way down the pass, at which point the tire was thumping so loudly that if we had been in an old Western movie I would have known Indian attack was imminent. Kandy was still blissfully unaware, a point which baffles me to this day. As we were driving past an on-ramp to the freeway, the first one we had passed in miles, something said, "Okay, NOW STOP." And again, I am not kidding. This something was very loud, and very adamant. "YOU HAVE TO STOP."

So with a sinking heart I turned to my sister, knowing we were about to walk the last ninety miles home, and told her we had another flat tire. She immediately hit the brakes and started pulling over. Now, by my calculations later, as if I could really do any "calculations"--maybe I should say by my estimate--we must have traveled three hundred feet before she brought the car to a halt in the emergency lane of the freeway and total silence descended on that station wagon. Ironically, I've been told that Ford--F-O-R-D--stands for "Found On Road Dead." But Ford doesn't make tires, as far as I know, so I can't even blame Ford for this incident--darn it.

Anyway, the silence inside the car did not match the noises inside my head, because for a church-going young man who shouldn't have known any curse words, there were so many of them flying about inside my thick skull that they must have been breaking in half in mid-stream, making all kinds of new words unknown to man until that day. I could not believe we had flattened three tires--and now four. And we were, almost literally, in the middle of nowhere. Yes, there was an on-ramp a hundred yards back, but this was rural Idaho. There was nothing of any significance near that on-ramp, and in particular there were no Big O's or Les Schwabses. (I like saying that--Schwabses.) I would have even settled for a Walmart Service Center at that point--except back then I had no idea what Walmart was and would have thought it was a wallpaper and Sheetrock shop.

My first thought was to try and cross the Federal Government fence along the freeway and head across this freshly plowed half mile of farm field to a lonely looking house I could see in the distance. But there were two major obstacles here: a Federal Government fence along the freeway and a freshly plowed half mile of farm field. Neither is a pretty sight. Those fences have no big, stout wooden posts to grab onto for climbing. They are made with metal posts--the kind that, if you slip and fall on them, tend to skewer you like a frankfurter. And if you try to cross between the posts, the nasty barbed wire, stretched tight as a drum, will make short work of you. As we say in the West, these fences are hog tight, bull-strong and horse high. You can't straddle them, even if you're Andre the Giant, and you can't bend them over. Obstacle number two, even if I somehow managed to fall over this fence, probably ripping my pants off and shredding my flesh in the process, and landed on the other side, I would still have to slog through the freshly plowed field, sinking with every step up past my hightops. And I would be naked! And besides, what if no one were home at the farm house, or worse yet, what if some crazed gang of serial killers had taken the residents hostage and were waiting for a couple of unsuspecting young people like us to wander into their well-planned trap? The possibilities seemed dismal.

So it was that when I reached that government fence and freshly plowed field and looked at that lonely, besieged farm house, I made the command decision without consulting with my driver to head instead for the on-ramp of the freeway. Heck, we didn't have any major appointments anyway.

Once I had made my decision I headed out with long strides. I was too mad to wait for Kandy. After all, she had said a prayer for us to be watched over before we left Salt Lake. Why hadn't it worked?!?! What kind of faith was she made of, anyway?!?! I think this was around the time my daddy died of cancer, or was in the process of dying, and optimism for me was in short supply, while pessimism was a boy's best friend.

So I was walking, through yellow grass that was probably a foot and a half or two feet tall. The reason I mention that particular fact is because it hid everything on the ground from me until I was almost on top of it, and this has some significance here. At this point I think I was fifty feet ahead of Kandy, and as near as I can figure it I was near the same point on the freeway where the voice in my head had finally told me to mention the flat tire problem.

Suddenly, something appeared there in the grass directly in front of me. Had I gone ten feet to either direction I might have missed it, but I was walking directly in line with it. It was a tire. I hope you believe me when I tell you once again, that I am not making this up. Granted, I am normally a fiction writer, but this story is true. I should stop the tongue in cheek now and get completely serious, because I was at the time. My heart nearly stopped, and goose bumps rose all over my skin. Not only was there a tire lying there in that tall grass, fifteen feet off the freeway and hidden enough that passersby would probably not see it or would take little notice of it, but this tire was mounted on a rim. Unfortunately, this rim was green, and our station wagon was baby blue--but I couldn't really demand a color match, could I? But it was a tire, and it was mounted on a rim. And then I made the real test--I leaned over and shoved on that tire with both hands, and it was about as full of air as it could be and had good tread as well.

I wish I could truly impress on the reader that this is a true story, from beginning to end. I have made pieces of it humorous, yes, for a little fun and to keep your interest up. But from the humorous to the serious and in-between, there are no parts of this tale that are not true. For this period in time I have become a non-fiction author.

Well, back to the spare tire. I had learned by now enough to know that different wheels have a different number of lugs on them. This particular rim had five holes. I remember the number very clearly. And after changing all those flat tires in the past two hours, I knew that so did the Ford. I knew nothing about tire sizes, of course, but that didn't matter to me then. My strength suddenly left me, and I found myself plopping down on the tire. My knees basically gave out, and I stared in disbelief at Kandy as she finally caught up to me and saw what I was sitting on. I don't remember speaking much at that time. I only remember finally finding my strength, lifting up that tire, and in a very humble posture rolling it back toward the station wagon. Of course, my pessimism had not totally fled me, even then. I have always believed it is better to be pessimistic and wrong then optimistic and wrong. At least if you're pessimistic and right you can say, "See, I told you so." And if you are wrong you could be elated. If you're optimistic and wrong you're just sad and stuck on the side of the freeway picking your nose and staring at a tall fence and a dirt field and a house full of hostage takers.

So my pessimism now was telling me that maybe the holes wouldn't line up. But to be honest with you it was a very weak pessimism at that point. Down deep I knew. I knew those holes would line up with the lugs on the Ford, and I knew we were going home. I just felt sorry for the farm family being held hostage by the crazed serial killers.

I took the spare tire to the car, and very humbly, and very quietly, I took off the flat, put the new tire on, which not surprisingly fit perfectly, and I sat in stunned silence for much of the trip home. There are times, when I think of this story, that I still sit in stunned silence--a fact that would probably surprise most people who know me very well, since I seldom take that long ago advice and shut up.

So, my readers, tell me: If the odds of winning a lottery are so low, what were the odds of stopping on that freeway where we did, walking back and finding that lost spare tire almost exactly where that voice had told me to have Kandy stop the car? What are the odds? I mean, spare tires don't just fall off vehicles every day, do they? I've walked, and run, hundreds of miles of roads. I've driven countless thousands. And never before or since have I seen an inflated, nicely treaded spare tire lying anywhere on the side of any road, not since that evening that my sister and I needed it so desperately. I could have ignored that voice in my head and had my sister stop before starting up the pass. I could have had her stop on top of the pass. I could have taken my chances and let her drive another five or ten miles after the voice told me to stop, just so I wouldn't have so far to walk home. I could have, but I didn't. The voice told me to stop, and I did. And there was that tire, like some destiny had made it fall off another vehicle in preparation for this desperate day.

I must say that in all the times I've shared this story, not one single person, professing to believe in God or not, has ever had the audacity to suggest that this was merely coincidence. Mostly, they just sit in silence much like I did back then. If I had written this as a fiction piece, it would be ludicrous, wouldn't it? No one would give it the slightest bit of credibility, and it would be shrugged off as drivel. But it's true. People can say there is no God, no Supreme Being who watches out for us. If you can read this story and still maintain the truth of that, then I feel sorry for you. I truly do. There is not a doubt in my mind whose voice was in my head that day, nor whose power caused my sister Kandy's ears to not hear. I only wish that part of my story could include how strong my faith was that we would be okay. But no, that part was Kandy's. I can still feel her peaceful serenity, her knowledge that we would be taken care of. And until I put that tire on her Ford, that was not the knowledge inside of me.

We are watched over, folks. I know bad things still happen, and God can't stop them all. If he did he would cease to be God. We came here to suffer and make mistakes and try to pull ourselves back up. Some of us go through extreme challenges, while some of us just spend our time changing flat tires. But whatever your lot in life, God truly is out there, and He truly is watching all of us and loves us and cares deeply what happens to us, even in those times when he can't intercede in a way that we would like him to. This life is only a test--yes, a hundred times more important than your college finals, but still only a test. But this one--Life--determines how you will spend the rest of eternity.

When that voice calls out to you, no matter how loud it sounds, please listen to it. You never know when there is a lost spare tire out there waiting just for you.