From Dad, 10/7/2005

OK, here it goes… remember I’m not an English major… unless a “D” on the report card meant “damn good.”

We used to live in Sanborn in the late 1990s, and I had to drive to Spencer every day to where I worked.

Anyway, “dads” vehicles have always been pieces of crap, according to Anthon,y so it’s pretty common for me to have a dead battery or a door that doesn’t open or to run out of gas a time or two or three.

One morning I went out to the garage to find that my car has developed a flat tire… hey no problem I’ll just go by a can of “fix a flat.” I bought the can for $7, filled my tire and I was on my way. About 3 days later I had another flat on the same tire and after a short drive to town and another 7 dollar can of flat tire fixer I was on my way. Three maybe four days later I had another one, three days later another, and another and another. After the third can of fix a flat, you’d think I’d have got the hint the stuff didn’t work.

I’m thinkin’ “man that must be one big hole” but then why couldn’t I hear anything when I’d air the tire up??? Well that kinda had me stumped, so I dropped the tire off at the tire repair shop. When I got done with work that day, I went to pick up my tire and put it back on my car. I should have known something was up when the mechanic said “Ah! you’re the one.”

I’m the one??? What the hell does that mean??? I didn’t want to be the one. He told me that he had never fixed a tire with more nails in it than the one I had brought in… Ah cmon now how many nails could it have??? 3 maybe 4??? Nope I had just set the world record of 23 nails in my tire. 23 NAILS. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?!?!

The entire way home I’m thinkin that it isn’t possible to run over 23 nails in a life time and I hadn’t had those tires for much over six months. He must have miscounted. Well I went thru the garage floor to see if I was somehow parking on a box of nails… no… then I parked at a new spot at work… no nails there and yet I got another flat a week later. I fixed it and now I’m gettin suspicious.

About two days later I found a roofing nail propped up against my tire and I knew who the culprit was…. it was that little turd Anthony. I find Anthony in the house after work and I asked him if he had any idea how many nails it took to make a tire go flat and he just grinned. His butt was sore for longer than if he had stopped at 22 nails and I haven’t had more than two or three flats a year since.