Father’s Day always brings back wonderful memories of my Dad. One of those is of a time over Christmas break during my junior year in college. I wanted to visit a friend who lived in central Ohio. She lived on a farm. I only had a motorcycle and couldn’t travel 3 hours in the frigid winter weather. So, I asked my father to borrow his truck for a few days to make the trip. His truck was absolutely critical to his livelihood as a foreman on a masonry construction crew. We had very little money – so obviously, he wasn’t thrilled to have his college-age son borrowing it. If something went wrong I had no means of replacing or repairing anything. I was able to convince him to let me visit by agreeing to bring a load of chopped fire-wood home from my friend’s family farm. After the visit, I loaded the truck with as much wood as I could fit. The truck had tool boxes attached to the top of the sides of the bed that allowed me to fill the bed to the top of the cab, completely covering the rear window of the cab. The truck sunk low. The front of the hood tilted a bit higher with the full load in the rear.
I pulled away from the farm and drove onward through winding country roads until getting to Conshohocken, Ohio. Just before getting onto the major highway, I decided to pull into a service station to fill up with gas. While pumping gas, I looked at the tires. They seemed low. I moved the truck over to the air pump and started putting air into the tires. Unfortunately I neglected to check the air pressure with a hand gauge. The air pump simply had a hose attached to the compressor without a gauge indicating the pressure. I continued putting air into the tires, but they still looked low. All of a sudden, a cannon-like boom-sound pierced the quiet. I stared in horror as the tire had exploded off the rim which now sat on empty rubber.
I walked over to the station and entered. There was a group of guys sitting in a circle. The largest one who was holding court with his friends said “What was that?” I said, “I think I put too much air in the tire.” He started to laugh. I said, “Can I borrow your portable lift to help put on the spare.” Because of the huge load of wood I couldn’t use the normal, small jack to lift the truck to change the tire. The large laughing guy walked out of the garage and stared at my father’s truck. He roared in laughter and called to his friends to come and look. They all spilled out and joined him in slapping knees and bobbing heads. The big guy’s laughter grew so hard he could no longer talk. He simply wheezed and waved his arm toward the portable lift for me to use it. I dragged the lift out of the station and placed it under the truck while they continued to gawk and laugh. It took me what seemed like forever to change the tire. The whole time I could still hear the guys who had moved back inside the station continuing to laugh about my predicament. I finished putting the spare tire on, returned the lift, and continued onto the highway.
When I finally got home, I told the story to my Dad. He rubbed his forehead, went outside to look at his truck, and shook his head. Then he started to laugh. “I bet that sound scared you half to death,” he said. “You have no idea,” I said. We started to unload the wood together and transport it behind a fence in the back of our yard. He chuckled a bit more throughout the unloading. By the end I was even starting to laugh. His patience is something I’ll always appreciate. He waited until summer for me to pay him back to replace the tire.
Todd Rivetti 