The Tire and I

Back in the mists of our early marriage, my husband showed me how to check the air pressure in the car tires. But those were the halcyon days of full-service gas stations, when the attendant always asked “check your tires, ma’am?” I would answer yes, and he would crawl around the car doing whatever was needed while I sat drumming my fingers on the steering wheel and looking off into space.

  

Now, a half century later, the chickens of my cavalier attitude towards tire maintenance have come to roost. Twice in the last six months, while I was far from home, the tire warning light gave me a fright by coming on.

The first time was during an episode of “wintry mix,” when the sky was simultaneously spewing rain, snow, and those annoying Styrofoam-like ice pellets. I was wearing a down vest instead of a parka and shoes instead of boots—I had expected to stay in the car, after all—and when I pulled into a filling station I had to tromp through a mountain of gritty snow that the plow had piled in front of the air pump.

I connected the air pump hose into my tire, got some quarters, waded into the snow bank, fed the machine, returned to the tire—and nothing happened. I offered the machine more quarters, hoping that my generosity would persuade it to disgorge some air, with no success. As a layer of wintry mix hardened on my glasses, I went into the station and asked for help.

“I’m sorry, the machine is out of order,” the attendant said.

“Do you know where I could find one that works?”

“Nah, not around here…”

Shivering, I got back in the car, dried my glasses, and drove home with bated breath, the tire light flashing reproachfully all the way. While I recovered with a glass of wine by the fireplace, my husband quickly inflated the tire with his portable air pump.

The next time the tire light came on was a sweltering July day. I was driving through the adorable Vermont countryside, replete with cows and barns, meadows and ponds. I stopped at a country store and was told that the nearest station was 30 miles away, but when I got there, there was no air pump. After more miles of hills, woods and farms I found a station with an air pump, which was out of order.

Sweating from every pore, holding my breath lest the tire go completely flat, I traveled on and at last found a station with a working pump. But by then I was so frazzled and dehydrated that all I could do was throw myself at the mercy of the cash register guy, who kindly inflated my tire while I sipped some Gatorade.

It took a while—about five months --to gear myself up for it, but yesterday I announced to my husband that I was going into the garage to check the tires, and would he stick around in case I needed help.

It was 20F outside and barely warmer in the garage, but I figured that this would be good practice for me, since the tire light liked to come on in extreme weather.

I found the air pump, plugged it into the cigarette lighter socket, and approached tire #1. I have a lifelong aversion to getting my hands dirty, and I wear gloves to dust a book or wash a dish, but this job would require fine manipulation, so gloves were out of the question. Trying to keep from touching any dirt, I unscrewed the inflation nozzle cap with my fingertips. This required me to kneel on the unpristine floor, but I reminded myself that in a real situation, i.e., by the side of the highway, conditions would be far worse.

“O.k.,” my husband said, “now screw the air hose connector onto the nozzle.”

I had to bend my arm at a weird angle to do this, and no matter how hard I tried the hose connector refused to connect with the nozzle. By now my fingers were red and stiff with cold, and smudged with grease.

Suddenly, a hiss as from a thousand cobras came out of the tire. “Quick! You’re losing air! Keep turning the screw!” my instructor said. But my frozen fingers could barely function, and the hiss was making it hard for me to concentrate.

Somehow the hiss stopped, and I checked the pressure gauge: 32 psi—just right.

But as I began to unscrew the hose connector, the hiss started up again. “You’ve probably lost too much air. Check the pressure again,” he instructed. I did: 31psi. “You’ll have to reinflate,” he said.

I rescrewed the connector onto the nozzle until the hiss went away. I pressed the On button on the pump and held on as it blasted air into the tire. I checked the pressure: 33 psi. I’d have to let some air out again, take another reading, reinflate….

What circle of hell, I wondered, was I stuck in? Would there ever be an end to this? Would my frozen fingers bend again? I didn’t remember the station attendants of yore having all this trouble.

Somehow, I got tire #1 done. I had to grab the door handle to stand up (my knees were frozen too). I brushed the dirt off my pants, hobbled over to tire #2, and genuflected. Some neighbors walking by saw me struggling with the air pump while my husband stood by with his hands in his pockets, and quickly averted their eyes.

Contrary to my expectations, tire #2 was no easier than #1, and neither was #3 or #4. Practice was not making perfect here. At one point there was an episode of cross-threading that I don’t want to even think about.

“I think that’s good enough,” my husband finally said of my work on #4. He helped me up and led me into the house.

“This is ridiculous!” I exclaimed, scrubbing my hands at the kitchen sink and slathering lotion on them. “Am I going to have to go through this every time I check the tire pressure? It’s too damn hard! There’s got to be a better way.”

“Uber?” said my husband.

But I will not capitulate. Research shows that it takes on average ten thousand hours to master a skill such as playing the violin. Assuming tire inflation to be only 50% as difficult, that means I’ll have to spend five thousand hours crawling around on the garage floor, screwing connectors and reading psis before I get it right.

Even so, I have no illusion that I’ll ever approximate the easy grace of those gas station guys of yore who so sweetly used to ask, “Check your tires, ma’am?”

Weird Advice I've Gotten Over The Years

Beginning with earliest infancy:

"Chew your food well." I've always bolted my food, probably as a result of the neonatal deprivations with which I may regale you some day. Turns out my mother was right. Digestion begins in the mouth (saliva and all that sort of thing) and you get more nourishment from food if you chew it thoroughly. Plus, you can lose weight that way, as it slows everything down and gives your stomach a chance to send fullness signals to your brain.

"Never leave the house without gloves on your hands and bows on your braids." My mother again. This was less a protection against the weather in (mostly) balmy Barcelona than a desire to have me look 1950s proper at all times. Misplaced gloves and hair ribbons were the bane of my childhood.

"Never read after a meal." Darn! That meant I had to actually sleep at nap time. My mother was referring to the phenomenon, otherwise known as "post-prandial torpor," whereby the blood leaves the brain and rushes to the stomach to help with digestion. Forcing the brain to work might interfere with the latter.

"When you go to bed, lie down on your back, with your arms alongside your body and your hands not all over the place." The German nuns who presided over my childhood. I took this so much to heart that my college roommate said that when I lay down to sleep I reminded her of a cadaver laid out in its coffin.

"Do not do ugly things." The German nuns again. This was repeated over and over, but at six, seven, or eight years old I had no idea what it meant.

"Always be pure, always be chaste." My paternal grandmother, pulling my uniform skirt over my knees. Again, no idea what she was talking about. But I did begin to learn certain principles of how to sit when wearing a skirt.

"Never meet a man's eye on the street." This was never actually verbalized, but it was ingrained in me from the time I could toddle along on errands. My mother never looked a man in the eye when we went to the fish market; my aunts never looked a man in the eye when they picked me up from school; needless to say, my grandmother never looked a man in the eye....

"Strapless gowns are an occasion of sin." Father McCarthy, my Irish religion teacher. No worries there. It was my high school's policy not to allow strapless gowns at school dances. We girls were told that if we wore provocative clothes, we would be culpable not only of our own sins, but of those of the boy we inflamed as well.

"Boys are like light bulbs, girls are like irons." Father McCarthy again. Not an inaccurate description of the sexual response in each gender. He said this to us in our annual day of "love and marriage" instruction, when boys and girls were separated. He added that an iron eventually gets as hot as a light bulb, so we should be very, very careful.

"Never trust a man who has a nose on his face." My maternal grandmother. But she said it with a twinkle in her eye.

"Remember, when you are on one of your famous dates, that God is watching you." A letter from my father.

"It's better to be loved than to be right." My mother in law. She was told this tidbit upon her marriage in the 1940s, and passed it on, with the best intentions, to me in 1967. It did not sit at all well with me--in fact I was outraged--and I'm afraid I told her so....

"No man will stay with you if you don't stop being so moody." My mother. But, amazingly, he did.