Where the Rubber Meets the Road

In the space of just four weeks during the most recent holiday season, I had to purchase three new tires for my Mormon mommy minivan. That seems like a lot, doesn’t it? I certainly thought so.

For the record, I prefer tire shops with mangy dogs chained in the back and hand-lettered signs taped in shabby doorways, not just because such shops usually offer used tires, cheaper prices and faster service, which they do, but also because I feel more connected to my community and the larger humanity in such shops. Yes, I’m being serious. I concede that big words about the connectedness of the human family manifesting itself in a grimy garage might sound overblown, but tires, especially flat ones, have taken on spiritual significance for me.

As I drive down the memory lane of various vehicle mishaps, my mental tires all appropriately balanced and inflated, of course, I can clearly identify a pattern of assistance that humbles me.

Spring 1996: Highway 290 in Houston, Texas This was my first experience with a stranger changing my tire. I was a fairly recent college graduate driving my first car with pretty much zero car maintenance experience, that one Young Women activity in the church parking lot notwithstanding. I was driving to the airport to fly home, which added some urgency. And it was dark, which added anxiety. I could feel that something was wrong with the car, and so I pulled to the shoulder of the road, wondering how far away the nearest pay phone was. This was during the olden days, when we fumbled darkly through cell phone-less existences! As soon as I stepped out of my car to examine the damage, another car pulled up. Three men hopped out and indicated that they would help me change the tire, though they communicated through hand gestures since they did not speak English. I opened my trunk and they got what they needed, took off the flat, put on the spare, put the supplies back in and waved goodbye with a smile. I was flabbergasted the whole time, wondering if this – this being the generous and timely help of people I had never met before in my life – had actually happened. It had, and I caught my flight.

Summer 2008: Highway 6 outside of Benchley, Texas It was over a decade before I had such need of help again, since marriage brought with it an in-house tire fixer. My cars continued to have flat tires but my then husband fixed them. However, during the summer of 2008, I was driving solo again. One hot June afternoon, on the way from Girl’s Camp, where I was serving as a leader, to the college where I was teaching summer school, a tire exploded. I again pulled to the side of the road, sighing the whole time. I knew where I was, yes, but it was out in the country and I feared that the whole tire business was going to make me late for work. My first instinct was to call my former spouse, but then I remembered he wasn’t my vehicle maintenance advisor any more. I called the roadside assistance line and was told that help would arrive within a two hour window. However, I needed to be at work in an hour. Another sigh.

Just then, a big pick-up truck off-roaded it up the grassy incline between the feeder road and the highway I was parked on and stopped behind me. An older man stepped out of the truck: “Saw you here, knew you needed help. I’ll take a crack at it.” Turns out, my spare was flat, so he drove me 15 miles to a tucked-away tire shop, told me which tire to buy, then drove me back to my van and put the new tire on. I told him repeatedly how grateful I was and thanked him for helping me get to work on time. “Oh, I was just heading home after pulling an overnight shift,” he said with a smile. “I know how that goes.”

Fall 2008: Interstate 35W in West, Texas A few months later, I had another blow-out on the interstate, this time on the way to visit family in the Dallas area. I managed to pull into a gas station parking lot, then once I turned off the vehicle, that urge to call my spouse bubbled up. When I called my former spouse, he encouraged me to dial roadside assistance, but I did not have the necessary information. Driver fail. And unfortunately, it was Friday night at 8 p.m. The gas station attendant did give me the number of someone who could help, but the wait would be significant. In the mean time, another van pulled into the parking lot beside me. The door slid open and seven or eight Muslim men stepped out. I knew they were Muslim because they unfurled several prayer rugs on the parking lot asphalt and knelt to pray. My children watched with curious eyes, as did I, though we were standing some distance from them, our backs against the grimy cinder block walls of the convenience store. One of the men noticed us and communicated to some of the other praying men that I needed help. And I did need help. They came up with a plan, and half of the men came over to my van and began rummaging around for the jack and wrench and assorted tools. The other men remained on the rug and prayed. A short time later, the men switched places. The praying men came to help and the helpers knelt to pray. This pattern continued until the work was done. Then the men climbed back in their van and waved goodbye as the door slid shot.

It just so happened that on this friday night, we were traveling to visit family for General Conference, and during that fall 2008 conference, Jeffrey R. Holland gave a talk about angels, observing that during times of distress, “there are those angels who come and go all around us, seen and unseen, known and unknown, mortal and immortal…. In the process of praying for those angels to attend us, may we all try to be a little more angelic ourselves, a kind word, a strong arm… Perhaps then we can be emissaries sent from God.” I listened to his talk with a keen sense that I had been visited by angels on I-35.

My tires managed to stay intact for another three years until this past Christmas season. December 2011, on a cold, rainy night in Houston, I experienced another blow-out, this time in a very busy, dangerous place where Highway 290 meets the 610 loop. As my van swerved, then spun 360 degrees over multiple lanes of traffic before coming to a gentle stop below an underpass, I was cognizant of how close I had come to hitting a semi, how close I had come to a fatal wreck. When I slowly pulled into a nearby gas station to examine the damage, I had only to step out of the van before a smiling man in a beautiful Jaguar came over to me. Turns out he was a Jaguar salesman and he knew his way around cars. He told me, however, that my jack was missing a certain piece needed to make it work. “We need to find somebody with a nice jack,” he said to me, then looked over my shoulder.

“Hey man,” he said to a fellow who had just pulled up. “I need your jack, need to help this lady.” This new man, the Jaguar salesman’s friend who had arrived coincidentally, retrieved his jack, helped hoist my vehicle into position, assisted in the tire switch-out, then drove off. The salesman made sure I did not throw the flat tire into the dumpster, as I was about to do, because apparently I would need it later. He would not accept payment, but told me that if I had any friends in the market for a Jaguar, he would appreciate the referral. I appreciated that he thought I would have friends in the market for a Jaguar, me in my jeans, torn leather jacket and 7 year old minivan!

In the next two weeks, January 2012, that same tire kept giving me fits, and again, people helped me – on one occasion, two mechanics who were on their way home from work outside of New Orleans, Louisiana, on I-10 helped me move the hubcap so that I could air up the tire. On the other occasion, two new friends, with whom I was practicing music in Kingwood, Texas, somewhere near Highway 59, helped me out. The homeowner tore himself away from playing Chopin on his stunning living room grand piano to change the van tire that had gone flat during the time I had been there.

I’ve learned a few things about tires: how to access the spare, why I don’t want to just toss the old tire still attached to the wheel in a big dumpster, that said wheel actually holds the tire and is expensive to replace, that the van needs to be jacked up before the lug nuts are removed, that the lug nuts will not come off, no matter if one has the strength of Hercules unless the van is jacked up, that the tread should be deep enough to hold coins. I might be able to change the tire myself by now.

I’ve also learned about the kindness of strangers, the goodness of people around me, and the need to be one of those good, kind people, an emissary of service, when I have an opportunity to be someone’s angel – as the carful of immigrants, the tired shift worker, the observant Muslims, the smiling salesman, the off-duty mechanics and the piano-playing gentleman were to me.