with a little help from my friends

If I don't write this, that song will never stop running through my mind. The Joe Cocker version, a slow-wringing torch-song with three backup singers, not the bouncy little ditty by the mop-tops. The good news is that I got through an entire Tuesday this week without a flat tire. [Chorus: Week's not over.] The bad news is that I'm reduced to that kind of good news. But the point is the manner in which the preceding Tuesday left me relatively unscathed, though chastened by the consequences of my own inaction. I'm lucky enough to brush misfortune, escape disaster, and carry on. I'm superstitious enough to take it all as symbolic of some larger truth.

I exit the building after a productive day mapping books and proofing pages and make it to my six o'clock class at the rec center. It's the last scheduled class of winter quarter. The one dedicated student who shows up is highly attentive and clearly getting the hang of Basic Movement until 6:45, when he develops a sore hip that forces him to stop and call it a day. Misfortune turns to advantage, as this frees the editor/teacher to depart the rec center in time to get up Old State Road to the old meeting house in Lewis Center for a seven o'clock committee meeting.

The committee meets the third Tuesday of every month, except when snowstorms cause a cancellation, and all four of us are fully present. We do our usual check-in ritual, and on this occasion it seems especially useful for all of us to say a few words about what else, besides committee business, is happening in life as we know it. We have an agenda, we moved through it without forcing the issue, digress when necessary to illustrate a point, and accomplish quite a bit in an hour and a half. I like these people, who are rather unlike me in many ways, and we seem to play well together.

As I'm driving out of the gravel parking lot, something is pulling-dragging-thumping, and on the pavement of Franklin Street I can tell I have a flat tire. This time it's the left-front. Last Tuesday it was the right-front, but that one was before the rec center class, so my luck is improving; this time I made it to both meetings before the breakdown of long-neglected tires. I'll just have to call the tow-truck and do that whole thing again.

But no, John stops to see what's the matter. Not just to ask but to offer the use of a can of Fix-a-Flat he has stashed in his trunk. He methodically walks me through the directions printed on the aerosol can and hooks it up to the tire, which quickly inflates enough to get me moving down route 23 toward Discount Tire on route 750. There's a glitch in the switch for the warning flasher, but I move it up and down a couple of time, and due to another miracle it starts working.

Discount Tire is closed, and the Tuffy Muffler shop next door, with a few tires displayed on a rack, is about to close. The proprietor doesn't have my size in stock, and he says I can get a better deal from the guys next door, whom he trusts. I take his card with their number and appreciate the help but choose to continue on down to A&A Tires on route 3, where they fixed me up last week.

It's interesting what you see going 25 on Polaris Blvd. at night that you don't see going 50. I decide to turn down lesser-traveled Old State, then Lazelle, then Sancus, then Park, Cleveland, Schrock, Cooper, and finally route 3, making a strangely slow zig-zagging mythic night journey on my hobbled steed. I park it in front of A&A Tires and make a couple calls.

My voice-mail messages to Gven and Zelda go unheard for the time being, so I take up Burb on his week-old offer to be the go-to guy in case of tire trouble. It's ten o'clock on a weeknight, for goodness sakes, he has a family to take care of, and I'm standing in a parking lot asking for a ride home. If you know Burb, you know he said, "No problem," put on jeans over his jammies, and came to the rescue. In a few minutes, he was there in his little red car, and I was quickly transported to my own warm house.

The next morning, it was a simple matter for Zelda to drop me off at A&A Tires on her way to work at the bookstore. It was snowing, adding a touch of drama to the logistics of everyone - Zelda, me, the tire guy, his helper - getting from point A to point B. Let's just say I had ample time checking out the titles in the all-night video store next door while waiting for the tire guy to arrive and throw a new P225/70R14 on the left-front rim, and while you're at it let's do the left-rear too.

Now, with the passage of time, it all blurs together. The first flat coincided with my eye exam the following day; the second flat and support-group rescue coincided with the new lenses being fitted to the old frames. What's that scene from Gatsby featuring a sign for an optometrist? The third week, anticipating a harsh third strike, I went back and replaced the fourth tire. Same surly tire guy, different helper at A&A, still a good deal for the money.