For all that talk about everything being bigger in Texas, there is some truth to that. It takes 22 hours to cross the breadth of Texas. We, however, were lucky enough to get started in Dallas, more or less the midway point, and found ourselves in Toyah (also known as nowhere) when adventure struck!
Now adventure in this case was the preventable kind. In Fayettville I noticed that our rear left tire had a slow leak. I changed it, put on our spare, and made, at that moment, a fateful judgement call. “This tire shouldn’t be a spare” I reasoned “it looks perfectly good to me, all except for that spot of dry rot”. I endeavored, despite my professional opinion to go to Walmart the next day before we headed out on our trip to Arizona. Walmart had a two hour wait, which of course to me wasn’t worth it, nor, apparently did I figure going to another tire place might be worth it. We had such a great spare, I could fill up our slowly leaking tire, and without any car weight to carry, it would be perfectly fine when we might need it down the road. So down the road we went with our slowly leaking spare, and our dry rotted rear tire.
The first day had me grinning from my male prowess in judgement and time saving. We made the six hour drive from Fayettville to Dallas with nary a wobble on that sweet spare. From all of the confidence I had built up the day before I figured on flying right on down to Tucson (a mere 13 hour drive from Dallas, which also happened to be a poor judgement call). Then it happened in the only speed corridor in the nation where I have seen a posted 80 mph sign. Between Odessa Texas, and El Paso, where the Permian Basin makes you feel like a grain of its endless sand landscape, going 80, the car began to shimay. I pulled over and discovered that our spare had be internally ill, and had basically unravled. We drove until the next overpass gave us a little shade and I enthusiastically pulled our suitcases out to find a deflated spare tire. These are the moments of epiphanies. This one came from the mouth of my lovely wife. “You should never drive with a compromised spare” she said quietly, mater-of-factly. “Interesting, and novel point” I thought to myself bighting my lower lip from shame.
So we found ourselves with a half disentegrated tire, sitting lonely in the sweltering Texas heat, one bar of cell service, two tire shops, both closed, neither answering their “24 Hour Emergency Service Line”, an arthritic pit-bull guarding the gate to one tire shop, and us and a few tumble weeds making the only movement in one of West Texas’ Jewels of civilization.
It was at this point, that our savior rolled up in his 94 Acura, windshield partly bashed in on the passenger side, looking like he just rolled off a scene from Miami Ink. “Hey man. You guys having tire trouble”? “Um…yeah, kind of”, I said bashfully. “Let me go down the road and see if I can wake one of the guys up who owns one of these tire shops. He’s probably drunk but I’ll see if I can get him out here”. With that he sped away. Shortly he returned with two ice cold pops. “My wife thought you guys might be needin these”. He had failed to rouse our drunken tire shop owners out from their lairs, so he directed us to Pecos, a town only 20 miles behind us, by which we could arrive using a service road for at least 10 of the 20 miles. “You should be able to limp back to Pecos alright, and when you get their call Duayne, he’s the only one who won’t rip you off”. We thanked our gracious friend and hobbled back to Pecos.
Now, you might think our adventure ended their, but the truth is that our cultural adventure was just set to begin. We pulled up to A and B tire and met Duayne there. Opening the garage Duayne had his 10 year old son Chris pull his Trans-Am out of the garage for us. Us city folk stared in awe as the ten year old hands managed the steering wheel better than both of us put together. “Oh he’s been botherin me to get him into that monster over there” Duayne said pointing to a small race car packed with more horses than a Wyoming Dude Ranch, “But I don’t think he’s quite ready”. My wife and I nodded as if we could even comprehend the context we were being exposed to.
We spent the next half and hour watching Duayne and his prolific son Chris strip our tires off the rims, fix and balance our spare, and mount our new tire. We were able to shoot the breeze with them as they worked quickly and efficiently. Duayne is somewhat of a local hero so it seems, although he would never say so. He and his Harley riding buddies take toys around to needy families during Christmas time using their personal Harley reindeer. He had built a scooter for his ailing father that his Dad could ride using only his hands, having had his legs amputaded as a result of his illness.
In the end Nick was right, Duayne didn’t rip us off, and provided us with excellent service, and a great story.
