A Duct Tape Tale

I was 28 years old. I had my drivers license a little over a year (yes, I was a late bloomer) and had bought my first car five months prior. A white, 4 door 1984 Pontiac Sunbird. No radio, no air-conditioning or heat. Perfect for a single mom and not much money.

The day was the typical very hot mid August day. It was my day to do urine collection at work, so I wore overalls and a t-shirt. I was not about to dress professionally with the possibility of someones urine splattering me. My luck, that's exactly what would have happened had I not thought ahead. My eight hour day began at 5:30 am and ended at 2pm. Between the heat and the long day, when it was time to clock out I was exhausted.

My first stop was always to pick my son up from the babysitters and then home. I headed south alongside the I-5 frontage road. About a mile into my trip my vehicle began to shake. I pulled over. I went all around the car for signs of a flat. I seen nothing. I thought 'That's strange'.

I got back in the car. Low behold, the shaking began again. Only now it was so violent I couldn't see out the window. I pulled over, exited the vehicle and repeated the same investigation. This time I found the right rear tire had about a foot and half long piece of tread hanging there. Hmmm....I had absolutely no clue what to do. So, I opened the trunk to look for a spare tire. I found it under the trunk bedding. I knew nothing about cars or changing a tire. As I attempted to retrieve the jack it would not budge. I tried and tried, still wouldn't budge. So I decided to drive real slow to the nearest gas station about a mile or so away.

The ride to the gas station seemed to take forever at under 5 miles per hour. At last I arrived at the station. A pay phone. Yay! Wouldn't you know, no one was available. I called the sitter to let her know I was running late and would be there as soon as I could. Now what? What was I suppose to do? I could cut the tread off. I went inside and asked the attendant for a utility knife. Looking a little puzzled, I figured I should explain. So I did. I was thinking 'How about offering buddy?'. No such luck. I wondered if I had been in my normal work clothes if it would have been different. Didn't really matter, I was used to trying to figure things out on my own most of the time.

To my dismay, the utility knife was not working. I noticed the tread had what looked like small fibers of steel or something through it. A deep breath. I needed a new idea. The light went on! Duct tape! Duct tape is used for everything, if it can keep windows together and all the miscellaneous things of heard of, why not my tire? I went back inside to ask the, non-helpful, attendant for duct tape. I wasn't going to explain anything this time. I set out to make my tire somewhat whole again and in the end, felt I had conducted a miracle.

On the road again. The car wasn't shaking. It was running smooth. What a genius I am. Girl or not, I was capable of taking on the world. See, I don't need a man. Little did I know I was about to eat the words I was just thinking. Suddenly, without warning, the shaking started. It got worse until I finally had to pull over one more time. At least this time I was on a main road. The duct tape had melted from the hot pavement. I opened the trunk and struggled with the jack, to no avail. Ten minutes or so went by and a man from animal control pulled over. He called the city police then left.

A few minutes had gone by when a female officer pulled up behind me. She showed me that the jack was bolted down. She unscrewed the nuts and out came the jack. What a genius I was not. She taught me how to change the tire. I left feeling relieved but at the bottom of the class and at the top all at the same time. I went straight to the used tire shop. When they took my duct taped tire out of the trunk the two men were laughing hysterically.