Bertha

a kinda sorta almost true Christmas story.........

My wife and kids left me in the gloom of late November. 

It was 1967, the year we moved to a small town of 5,000 in Iowa.

I loved my kids. And I loved my wife, a smart, adventuresome California blond. A card-carrying liberal, who was not type cast to fit in with a group of conservative corn and hog farm wives. 

Accompanied by our cat, Clyde, earlier that spring I drove my carefully restored 1955 Ford truck, pulling a rented U-Haul trailer, to a town just east of the Iowa/Nebraska border.            

Asking around about housing, I was turned on to a guy offering for rent, a semi-ramshackle quintessential clapboard farmhouse complete with a screened in front porch, and views that stretched out forever across the flat as a pancake landscape. The house plunked down in the middle of a 600 acre corn patch was a Rockwell setting with all the usual outbuildings including barns, silo and tool sheds. The owner still farmed the plot but he and his wife lived in town and looked to rent the spread’s living quarters, such as they were, for $50 a month including utilities.  

Iowa, land of infinite acres of corn and soybeans. I’d come to spray them with chemicals.
 
After we spent every dollar we had and didn’t, enrolling me in flying school to become an airline pilot, I instead had fallen in love with helicopters. Plain and simple, helicopters were more exciting.  

Commandeering a helicopter is an art form. After appreciating the maneuverings of a flying machine that responded to the subtlest of gestures, I was hooked.  

My wife supported me even though dismally disappointed seeing her dreams of flitting around the world on free company passes evaporate with my change of vocation.  

After being certified to operate that breed of aircraft, getting a job proved daunting. It was a ‘what came first, the chicken or the egg?’ thing. To get a license only required 65 hours of expensive instruction. To get employment using those skills, due to insurance mandates, required 1,000. Ex-military pilots were given priorities for good reason, they had the experience.  Racking up the hours needed between those numbers required creativity, patience and perseverance. My wife spent long days typing letters soliciting work to helicopter companies all over the world. Daily our mailbox filled up with rejection letters telling me to check back when their liability insurers could be satisfied.

My break came when Iowa Farmer Joe, a large grower, girth wise and in numbers of acres, figured rather than pay someone else to douse his fields, he could buy his own small helicopter to get the work done, plus make a little extra on the side hiring it out to his neighbors. Through the grapevine it became known that he was searching for a newbie pilot willing to work for little pay. He didn’t require insurance and one could log lots of hours. That was me.

There wasn’t enough room inside my single benched old truck for my wife, four year old daughter and newborn son to make a road trip from California to Iowa, so we splurged on airline tickets. I picked them up at an airport in Omaha and we headed to our new abode.

Relocating from the bustling semi-citified San Fernando Valley in always mild Southern California to a corn/soybean/hog raising town of 5,000 presented us with culture and climate shock. 

One day I came home to find my wife sorrowfully lamenting her newcomer status because she sensed the locals were both scandalized and fascinated with her wearing a two-piece bathing suit at the community swimming pool. 

Another day, all whispers were about her, she was sure, because she wore eye make-up to the grocery store. 

Additionally, strange weather events like deafening thunderstorms that rattled the windows along with tornado warnings, made us feel like we were living in the jolly old land of Oz.  

I was gone most of the time, recording hours in my official log. 

In late fall, my wife’s mother called to announce her own relocation plans. As a newly single woman, she yearned for adventure. 

“I’m moving, “she told her daughter, “to Hawaii.  “I want to see you and the kids before I leave,” she requested. “I’m taking off right after Thanksgiving. If I send tickets for the three of you, would you consider coming back earlier than planned?   Sorry I obviously can’t offer lodging until your handsome fly-boy husband gets back, but maybe you could stay with his mother til then?”  Her mother’s voice betrayed a shade of doubt about how that suggestion was going to go over.
 
My own mother, a loving and very vocal supporter of all things ‘me’, her bouncing baby boy, was often critical of anyone else’s ideas. She’d alienated many, including my wife who was acutely aware that there was nothing she could do that would be acceptable when it came to how she treated me and the raising of our children. 

Nevertheless, with gritted teeth, the only short-term option offered was accepted by my begrudging wife to bunk with her bossy mother-in law until my return.

Problem #1 solved. After working my ass off that whole season we had little money to show for it and we weren’t sure how they would get back to good old So. Cal. Small truck..not family transportation.  The offer of free passage home for them was manna from heaven. I had been dreading making a call to good old Dad for yet another loan. 
        
How to get our possessions home was Problem #2.
        
Renting a U-haul trailer for the return trip home was a budget buster. At a farm sale I came across an old flatbed hay trailer for twenty-five bucks. Could I convert it to a moving van? 
           
And that’s how I found myself wending my way back to Southern California in my prized truck, with our cat Clyde, one hundred dollars in cash and towing a make-shift 20 foot trailer filled with all our worldly goods. 

             
A few weeks before, as my wife packed boxes, I started the construction project that would transform a hay wagon into a furniture hauler. Scrounging around the farm buildings I discovered an old pile of plywood 4x8’s . When the landlord gave permission to use them as needed, I got out my toolbox and went to work. It looked quite grand when assembled and all it needed was paint before hitting the road. 
         
Delivering my family to the airport I assured them I would only be a couple of weeks behind them. I figured I could finish the trailer, tie up some loose ends for farmer Joe and be on the road for the 1,500 mile trip home, arriving in plenty of time for Christmas. I calculated it would be a three-day drive at most. Gas at thirty-three cents a gallon would cost around forty bucks. McDonald drive-ins offering twenty-five cent burgers in every town took care of meals and I would pull over and sleep in the truck when needed. Ah….the best laid plans.

Right on schedule my landlord watched me leave, giving me a thumbs-up as I pulled out the long driveway lined with frozen corn stalks.  My truck pulling the bright orange wooden trailer, complete with white racing stripe, designed to look like a real U-Haul, made the turn towards the highway as I waved back enthusiastically. I felt great. Safely stashed in the glove box was my precious log book, now boasting over 600 hours flown. I was on my way to becoming a full-fledged, employable pilot. This crazy summer would be a dim memory very soon I reckoned.
 
“Crap,” I growled to our cat Clyde warmly curled up on the seat next to my leg. He sprang awake alert, as the loaded trailer pulled the truck drastically to the right, accompanied by loud thumping vibrations. On the ramp to the bridge spanning the Missouri River, dividing Iowa and Nebraska, I eased to the side of the road, got out, and discovered the starboard tire on the trailer was flat as the horizon. It had been all of an hour since leaving our summer homestead in Harlan. A fine start, was my first thought. Where had I packed the jack and spare was my second. 

At least the now useless tire blew on the non-traffic side of the road. Swinging the huge 4x8 plywood doors open I rifled around and while looking for repair parts noticed that some very heavy items were smack dab over the single axle wheels. Too much weight on stress areas I thought. With great effort, I wrestled my favorite tool in the world, Bertha, my beloved air-compressor, to a space not directly over the point of traction.  Yep, that should take some weight off I concluded. Jacking up the trailer wheel proved to be much harder than a normal truck tire. After two hours of straining my back and rolling around in the dirt, finally having installed the spare, Clyde and I were chugging along again, me happily humming an old Hank Williams tune.

Going slower was a good idea I decided. Take it slow and easy. Guess this ark sized beast was more fragile than I first thought.

A few hours later, radio tuned to the local country western station, fatigue overtook me.  Cruising into the next roadside rest I curled up in the narrow seat, after delegating Clyde to the floorboard, and immediately drifted into a fitful slumber.

A rapping on my window sounded just as the sky lightened. “Hey buddy,” the voice of a man peering in roused me. 

“Sorry to wake you up but didn’t know if you knew your trailer had a flat tire?” he stated. 

Out of my fog I think I rattled off a round of expletives, then, knowing better than to attack the messenger, apologized and pulled my boots on as I climbed out of my perch to check out the damage. Yep, portside this time.  Double crap.

In the first of many collect calls coming to my mother’s house I explained to my wife the travails of the trip so far. 

“Two flats the first day is not a good sign,” I sighed into the phone’s mouthpiece. “The spare, already used, left me no other option but to hitchhike to the nearest gas station and buy another one. That’s twenty bucks out of the budget.” 

“If the trailer is too heavy, why don’t you get rid of that elephant sized air compressor,” my wife helpfully suggested. She had decried dragging it around before and knew she was beating a dead horse.

“Not an option,” I stated emphatically. “I’ll just have to drive slower. So this call is about delays,” I explained trying to disguise my crankiness, “not about getting rid of anything. Sorry, but this is going to be more than a three-day trip. How are you and Ma getting along?” I then asked, wanting to change the subject but knowing full well not to expect a glowing report.

“It’s okay,” she sighed, sounding resigned. “I miss you madly, hope things go smoother from now on.”

“Me too, I’m dreaming about snuggling up to your warm body in our fluffy bed,” I confessed, wishing I could just twitch my nose and be there. “Gotta go, I’ll call again soon.”

When I crossed into Colorado the next day it began to snow. Oh great, an early winter too. Bringing my thirty-foot caravan to a crawl, out of fear it would skid off the road down into an abyss, I noticed Clyde perched in the litter box lodged on the floor. His noisy deposit erupted in a surge of diarrhea filling the small cab with a nauseating moist cloud. 
“Oh bud, what a bummer”, I sympathized, quickly rolling down the window, sticking my head out into the fresh blizzardly smell of cold pristine air.  Very slowly guiding the truck and its cargo to the side of the road, I got one boot out the door when my gag reflex gave way and up came my morning’s Happy Meal.  

“Poor baby, did he barf up too?” queried my wife on the next collect phone call recounting Clyde’s affliction. “Do you think he’s carsick? 

“No, but that probably will be next,” I sighed. “But, that’s not all. Thought I’d dodged a bullet when I made it down that snowy pass almost sliding sideways,” I continued, delivering the rest of the previous day’s saga. “Then just as the highway swept down into the valley, with clear skies and I sighed a breath of relief, the now familiar thud pulling the truck to one side made me want to scream.”

“Is that three flats now, in two plus days?” she asked.

“There’s more,” hating to be the bearer of bad to worse news, nevertheless proceeding.

“This time when the tire blew the tire’s rim got squashed too. By the time I got the truck pulled over the trailer’s left axle was giving off sparks.” 

“Sparks? Did it start a fire?”

“No, it wasn’t that bad, but I had to hitchhike to the booming metropolis of Crook, Colorado, population 102, and it was getting dark. The only gas station was just closing.  The owner couldn’t help out til morning, but felt so sorry for me he gave me a couple of candy bars and said I could sleep in his office. Starving, I scarfed down the candy and curled up to catch a few z’s on the lumpiest couch this side of the Pecos.” 

“Oh my gosh” she gasped. “You poor baby, then what?”

“The next morning, he brought me a cup of coffee and gave me a ride to the nearest junkyard, 40 miles away, where I bargained for a used tire and rim. It was a long time, after three o’clock before I got a ride back to the truck carrying a rusty old used wheel. Poor Clyde, I’m sure he thought he’d been abandoned forever, and welcomed me with another round of the runs. That was the last of the kitty litter, so I refilled his box with dirt from the side of the highway.”
             
“Well, you’ll remember this trip for a while, eh?” she not so helpfully noted. “Do you think he’s OK?”
            
“Yep and he was happy to see me, I’ll tell you that. But it took me another two hours to change wheels and get back on the road. So that’s three days and only four hundred miles.” 

“I thought you’d be home by now,” she lamented.
“Me too.”

It was a flat straight shot through eastern Colorado to Denver. Plugging along at a snail’s pace, waving back to passing drivers staring bug-eyed at my small truck pulling such a behemoth, my mind wandered back to our experience in Iowa. 

Part of my job description included drumming up new business whenever and wherever. Farmer Joe expected me to hand out business cards, touting our services to every grower encountered which was almost everyone in the state. One fun perk he encouraged when not spraying crops was attending ‘fly-ins’.  My 2 seated helicopter, a small Hughes 269 was parked on the farm where we lived. Sometimes on Sundays, my wife and I would enlist a babysitter, and wing our way to a Fly-In breakfast or a fair in a nearby county. The brunch breakfasts, usually held at a single hanger airport, surrounded by corn of course, were attended by other pilots and their guests flying fixed wing machines. Swooping down in a helicopter, we were greeted with special attention. Mingling over pancakes and coffee, handing out business cards to any farming attendee insured my continued wages. Being able to share the rush of flying and spying from on high with my wife gave her some bragging rights too. Ah…good memories that I clung to as I tried to keep my mind off what seemed like a cursed journey.  

Flat number four swerved me off the road just outside of Denver. After negotiating for another re-tread, I counted out a meager eighteen dollars left to afford me gas, eats and other unforeseen events before reaching home.

By this time Clyde and I fell into a road weary state. Meowing loudly while alternately scratching at the window he would then look at me with pleading eyes to be released from our confinement. All I could do was silently commiserate.   

“Clyde, old buddy, we have to stay upbeat,” I weakly advised when he finally stopped protesting and took his place on the seat next to me. To stay awake I hummed along to Willie Nelson crooning ‘On the Road Again’ until my eyes were fluttering. Spotting a roadside rest just outside Eagle, Colorado we lumbered into it. 

I slumped down and instantly fell asleep after thanking my lucky stars for the flat-less last 100 mile stretch.
But doom was hot on our trail. More bad luck came soon after taking to the road again the next morning. At least it happened across the road from a service station.

“Well young man, you’re pulling quite the load there,” the pot-bellied mechanic commented wiping his hands on his already greasy overalls. He walked around the orange hulk, shaking his head. 

“This here old trailer only has one axle,” he appraised. “You gotta get rid of some weight, kid,” he advised, rubbing his stubby chin. 

I could hear my wife agreeing with this good old boy. 

Of course I knew full well what a big part of the problem was. Bertha, my treasured air compressor had become a trouble-maker. 
Years before a friend had alerted me to the de-construction of a gas station. Sitting abandoned, under the dug-up concrete, lay the company’s air source for tire inflation. Standing six feet tall and so rotund a big man couldn’t reach around it with two arms, I’d gotten quite attached to her. I’m an engine kinda guy. My prize possessions include my truck and two racing motorcycles. Machines and engines require air supplies, and nothing beats a mighty air blast to easily clean debris from entire rooms. I’d moved it multiple times already and come hell or high water it would make it back to good old Southern California. 

The latest flat had taken the rim with it. 
“Can you help me out”, I pleaded to the mechanic. “She’ll need a whole new wheel.”

The amount equaled more than my meager homeward budget. “Is there a pawn shop nearby?” I questioned.

Standing at the long glass countertop of Gold Pan Pawn, I plunked down my Tony Lama cowboy boots. I’d dreamt of having a pair for years. For our first anniversary, my wife excitedly gave them to me. So it was with an extra heavy heart I left them there with enough cash to get a meal or two and fix a couple of more flats, not an optimistic, but realistic outlook. 

Before getting back on the road, I made another collect call. 

“Where are you?” my wife’s voice shrieked through the receiver. “Your mom and I have been so worried”…..

“Hey hey, I’m sorry. It’s okay,” I tried to sound consoling, but knew I should have made a bigger effort to find a phone before then. “Two more flats,” I tiredly explained. “I’m out of money and am bartering the rest of the way home. Hopefully someone will want enough stuff outa this crappy trailer to get me there.”

“What? Get rid of our stuff? Your mom and I can send you money….where are you?” she asked again.

“Grand Junction, I’m in Grand Junction, on the border of Colorado and Utah.”

“Really? You’re not even in Utah yet?  This is a nightmare,” she aptly called it.

“I know, I know,” I tried to sound soothing. “Right now it’s almost dark. I’m gonna sleep a while and then keep on. If you send money tomorrow then I’ll lose at least one day waiting for it. Only a couple of more days,” I assured her with absolutely nothing to base that prediction on.

“Kiss the kids. I’ll call again soon.”

If there had been a god of tires I would have humbly prostrated myself before him.


“Clyde, can you believe this mess I got us in?” I asked when waking up from a short roadside nap, cold, hungry and confronted with the realization of where we were. “Damn, I’m tired,” I groaned. 

With green eyes meeting mine, he stretched out, giving a yawn and low growling sigh. He seemed to know, like me, the only option was to carry on.

Rolling into Salma, Utah, approaching I-15, late afternoon, day four, tire crisis number six only flattened the rubber, not the rim, and for that I was grateful. Three hours later we were southern bound on the Interstate dragging along in the slow lane looking and longing for a restaurant and parking lot.

Truck stops serve cheap but filling food and I was starving. Returning from a gorge-a-thon I noticed my jeans were still more than a little loose and marveled on how I’d tried so hard to lose weight all these faddish ways when all I had to do was take a road trip from hell and the pounds poured off. 

Ridiculously I tried to walk Clyde, for some exercise, in the sprawling parking area, with my belt cinched around his neck. He was having none of it. Quickly I saw the folly of it and stuffed us both back aboard the space that felt more and more like a prison cell complete with daily torture sessions. We pressed on until midnight then pulled over for a rest.

Even in my dreams I struggled with lug nuts and tire pumps. From sleeping in the pretzel pose, my back welcomed me on day five with a kink that drew stares as I hobbled like Quasimoto to the men’s room at the roadside rest near Cave Fort Utah on Interstate 15. 

Desperate for a caffeine fix, I held my chipped and filthy coffee mug under a trickle of liquid the consistency of motor oil as it oozed from the visitor’s center coffee vending machine. Taking it back to the truck, even Clyde, watching through the window, gave a skeptical look when I raised it to my lips. “Don’t do it,” he seemed to be saying. How bad could it be? I thought. 

The first swallow of lukewarm acid-like scum brought me to my knees. 

Puking and coughing up the vile brew drew attention from the male half of an older couple, out walking their fluffy little lap dog. 

Rushing over, he patted me on the back asking, “Are you Okay?” 

“Bad batch,” I sputtered, feeling foolish about retching in the parking lot and drawing attention. 

Holding my elbow he eased me to an up-right position as he surveyed the orange box on wheels. His eyes darted side to side taking in the size of it. Thanking him for his help, I opened up the truck’s door just enough to squeeze inside without letting the cat out. Clyde had spied the dog by then and was meowing loudly while furiously scratching on the window that was cracked open for fresh air. 

The man’s wife came closer to see what was going on. “It’s Clyde,” I explained, pointing to the cat, and carefully got out. “We’ve been on the road a while.”

“Where are you going?” she asked, noticing the paper coffee cup floating in a sea of vomit, on the ground. 

“California.” 

“Mmmmmm…that’s a ways. Is your cat hungry?” she smiled. He looks rather desperate.” 

“He’s got food. He wants out,” I answered, thinking we must look odd. Not many guys traveled with a cat.

“I’m Bob. Quite a rig you’re hauling”, the man commented, his eyes wandering across its dimensions. “Must be something to keep it on the highway during the blasted desert crosswinds.”

“Nice to meetcha” I gulped, introducing myself and shaking his hand. “Crosswinds?”

“Yep. The next hundred miles those gusts come right on down the canyons, sometimes strong enough to tip a big old semi over.” His eyebrows raised and he slowly started to walk alongside the length of the trailer whose paint already looked the worse for wear. 

“Hmmm….single axle,” he muttered. “What are ya hauling?”

“Household stuff mainly, pretty big load though. Too big probably,” I admitted. Together we walked slowly around the back, where the huge, slightly uneven doors were held closed with an old paddle lock. Rounding the corner with eyes drawn to the wheel on that side, my heart sank. I could feel the bellow start in my gut and out it came with such force I could feel my face redden. Aghhhhh…holy crap…@&%^###.  “Not before coffee,” I raged, kicking the deflated tire with a force that almost landed me on my butt. 

“Hey, Rita,” Bob calmly shouted back over his shoulder to his wife. 

“This guy needs coffee. Could you bring him a cup please?”
Day five. Whew. Flat number seven had been a slow leak. Rim intact. I took a deep breath. Looking in my wallet, I was down to six bucks. 

“We can give you a lift to a service station,” Bob’s wife Rita offered, handing me a huge mug of sweet smelling brew. 

“Our rig’s over there,” she pointed. A sleek Airstream trailer gleamed behind a new ruby red ¾ ton truck. “But first, let’s eat some breakfast. Come on,” she beckoned.  

“That’s why we love our new retired lifestyle,” Rita chattered while flipping pancakes. “We can wear sweatpants all day long,” the stout but fit looking woman said breaking into a big grin. “We sleep when and where we want, and when we’re hungry we just pullover, huh Bob?”

Bob nodded, stroked his three day whiskered chin and poured me a third cup of coffee. It felt like I’d died and gone to heaven. Leaning back into plush pillows in the kitchen nook, I noted that this condo on wheels offered more luxury than I’d ever had anywhere. 

Feeling fit and re-energized I accepted their offer of a ride and excused myself to take care of a couple of things before leaving poor old Clyde guarding our goods. Tires cost more than six dollars. The first thing that caught my eye when I opened the cumbersome doors of the trailer and crawled inside, was my wife’s sewing machine. Instantly my mind took a ride down memory lane.

While in Iowa, our family of four could fit in the truck for short-ish Sunday excursions to nearby counties. We loved checking out the predictably designed hamlets. The standard issue town square spotlighted a Town Hall, surrounded by grass, flowers, tree lined paths and beckoning benches to rest a while on. The county roads connecting these ‘Music Man’ storybook towns led us by quaint old farms with still producing fruit trees planted by great-grandparents. 

On one such jaunt, my wife pointed to a ‘Farm Auction’ sign, which we followed and before we knew it we were loading a very old Singer cabinet sewing machine into the back of my truck. 
 
My wife’s previous sewing experience amounted to a crookedly stitched gym bag in grade eight. Not to be deterred, she excitedly vowed to expand her skills. As previously mentioned, my job paid me in hours flown, but not much money. 

As usual she threw herself in headlong into her new endeavor but there wasn’t much money for sewing materials. A quick cruise through our closets gave her lots of re-purposing options. 

As a Father’s Day gift she presented me with a shirt she crafted out of one her old high school skirts. It was peach, she informed me, not orange. Did I like it, she asked? “You bet”, I told her, discreetly pulling down the left sleeve to make it look the same length as the right. 

But she got better and that quick recollection of her love for that old sewing machine made me walk on by, pushing my way to where our clothes hung on a long rod. 
 
Fumbling through them I came upon my elk skin jacket. For a minute I stood fondling the fringe, then taking a big breath, stuck it under my arm and quickly exited locking the flimsy plywood doors.

Rita was an inquisitive gal and by the time we got to the first garage in Beaver Utah, twenty-five miles south, I had shared my whole story and Clyde’s too. She oohed and aahed when I told her Clyde was a special cat. I had surprised my wife bringing him home at six weeks old. Black with distinct white markings labeled him a ‘tuxedo cat in color.’ In breed he was Manx. Manx cats have very small knobs for tails and their hind ends angle up giving them quite the Groucho Marx stride. And they’re talkers, smart ones seeming to have mind reading capabilities. Having one for a companion, even accounting for the negatives in our small space, was actually a saving grace.

My saviors dropped me off on a busy offramp and after saying grateful goodbyes, I walked over to the entrance of a garage. A young kid, of no more than sixteen pulled himself out from under the vehicle he was working on.  

“Hi, can I help ya?” 

“You can if you’ve got a tire to fit my trailer,” I answered.

“How much?” I asked, looking at the tread on the tire he rolled out for my inspection.

“Fifteen bucks, but,” he looked down and then straight in my eyes. “Twenty-five bucks for two.”

Slowly I took the jacket from under my arm and slipped it on. 

“Damn,” the kid admired grabbing a clean rag to wipe his hands. “Is that elk?”

“Yep,” I gave a half twirl, “A present from my wife. Took her a long time to save up for it.”

“Wow, that’s a beauty”. 

“Look, I need money to get home to California. You can have it for the two tires, fifty bucks, and a ride back to my rig.”

The kid whistled and shook his head. “I don’t have that kind of money but let me ask my dad.” 

Going into the small house behind the garage, he emerged a few minutes later holding two twenty dollar bills.

“He said,” gesturing to the house,“ that he could give you forty and the tires.”

Not being in a bargaining position, we shook hands and I accepted the much needed cash. As I shrugged out of the one item of clothing I owned that always turned heads, I simultaneously felt relief overcome my sense of remorse. I sure hoped my wife loved me as much as she said she did.

The kid plunked the tires in the back of his work truck. I opened the door and got in.

Pulling back on to the Interstate going north, he looked over, eyes inquiring.  “How’d you get yourself in this kind of pickle?” he asked. “Is your wife gonna be mad atchya?”

“If I don’t get home by Christmas, she may never speak to me again,” I lamented, thinking of all I’d put her through. “My wife’s been a real trooper but that might be the last straw. What’s the date today?” 

“This here afternoon is December twenty,” he answered. “I surely do hope you make it. My Ma would be madder than hell if my Pa wasn’t home to play Santa.”

As we pulled up to my truck/trailer combo, the kid’s eyes bulged. 

“You’re driving that all the way to California?” he questioned. 

“Looks awful big for a single axle,” he then commented.

“Yeah, well”, I shrugged.

Thirty minutes later, tire changed, I refreshed Clyde’s litter box and we were back on the road looking for a station to gas up.  The four dollars spent, made me decide to skip dinner and keep on driving.
Crap, I was thinking. December twentieth? What was the chance on making it home in three plus days with my current track record?  Sliding home just under the wire was feeling habitual.  

Flying school, 600 miles away in Nevada, lasted longer than planned. I’d been gone for six months, almost the entire time my wife was pregnant. She’d gone it alone with a stiff upper lip but had no intention of giving birth without me.  As her time grew closer, she grew more anxious. In the nick of time, our long anticipated reunion took place the very night before our son was born. 

Two months later I’d practically abandoned her in Iowa. Currently she was barely holding it together living with my mother, and here I was, on the road with no end in sight. “Well Clyde,” I groaned, “I’m going to need a ton of good luck to pull this deadline off. Better find a phone booth and warn her now, eh old boy?”

“Yes,” I heard my wife agree to accept charges. 

“Oh honey,” I told her, “I’m so glad to hear your voice.” I could feel my own weaken when I heard hers. 

“Me too. So, I’m afraid to ask where and how you are?”

“Well darlin, I’m only in Utah,” I told her, “been having a pretty rough go.” I tried not to sound too pathetic, wishing with all my might I could be out of my cramped stinky cab and with her in a warm bed.  

“I forgot what date it was until this morning and the way things are going I can’t say if I’ll be home for Christmas. Every time a tire blows it sets me back a half day or so.

“Oh my god, I hope it won’t be much longer. Your mother is driving me nuts. Tonight I wanted to choke her.” She sounded desperate.
 
“Hey, I’m so sorry she’s being combative. Don’t take it personal. Hang in there, I love you. I’m trying. And hold off on strangling her”, I suggested in an effort to keep things light. 

Then I heard her sniffle.

“I just miss and worry about you. Every call brings bad news. Call me when you can.”
After a bit of sweet talk we hung up and I felt better. 

Getting back on the road I expressed my relief to Clyde, cranked up the radio, and sang along until 2am when I pulled into a rest stop 50 miles north of St. George. Even with layers of warm clothes, two blankets and a purring cat under them, it was a bone chilling night.  
On December 21 I woke feeling like I had slept inside an ice palace. Holding my breath, I crept around inspecting tires. Seeing them all intact felt like a weight the size of Texas was taken off my back.

Drive-in eateries were the highway traveler’s new best friends. Built for smaller vehicles than my train, I had to park and leave the comfort of my smelly but warm nest to face the elements. Again, food being cheap, I could fill up on two bucks. Making a dash to the inside order window and quickly retreating to the already ripe truck, Clyde and I shared the spoils. I worried that his love of French fries was a contributing factor to his frequent up-chucking attacks, but felt guilty at the mere thought of depriving him of his only joy, captive that he was.  

That afternoon, just before crossing the Nevada line I heard the familiar flapping of rubber as the steering wheel pulled to the right. 

“That’s flat number eight,” I sighed wearily to my feline companion. “At least we still have a spare if the rim didn’t go too.” 

Careful to not let Clyde escape from our confines, which he really wanted to do, I held my breath and hobbled around to check out the damage. 

“Whew, bud.” I looked at him staring through the window. “Luckily, this time we just creamed the rubber,” While struggling with the padlock to retrieve tools and the remaining tire, the wind started to blow. Putting the speed on, we were back on the road in record time. Slamming the truck door I had the nagging feeling I forgot something. 

Map check. We weren’t that far from Las Vegas. Many potential options trading stuff for tires, I surmised. 

Merging on to the highway from the sheltering side road, the first gust of crosswind hit us. With the blasts came clouds of dust so thick I was rendered visionless for seconds at a time. Each time one hit, the trailer swayed and bucked like a wild bronco at the Calgary Stampede, pushing us closer to the narrow shoulder and ditch.  Blowing east to west, white knuckles gripping tightly to keep on the road we started up an incline. Big and small rigs alike struggled to stay on course. Growing weary after a windblown hour or so, I noticed a truck’s lights flashing behind me. Slowing down even more, it pulled as close as possible given the wind. A guy rolled down his window and screamed something about doors being open.
 
“Huh?” I yelled back. Through the clouds of blowing soil I saw him pointing to the back of the trailer. 

Pulling off the road, I sat shaking when the man from the truck knocked on my window. “Are you OK?” he mouthed. Rolling down my window I stammered, “I think so.”  

“Afraid you lost some stuff out of your trailer,” the man told me. 

“Huh? What?”

“Things from the back of your trailer fell out on the road,” he gestured behind. “I’ll drive down the road til I find a phone to call for some help,” and he drove off, leaving me wide- eyed and unbelieving.

At that moment, Clyde started scratching the seat and meowing loudly, which was exactly what I felt like doing.

Fighting the wind to open the driver’s side of the truck, I leaned on the fender to walk to the back where I heard and then saw the doors banging. It didn’t take long to realize that in haste, after the last flat, I had not padlocked them shut. I slipped the bolt in place, but it wasn’t secured.  The whipping wind caused them to flap open. How could I be so stupid as to not lock the doors? 

My heart sank further as I looked down the road in the dim twilight through the blowing sand, and saw various articles from within, now strewn down the highway.  Clothes, once tethered on a rack close to the end of the trailer were the first to go. 

Hoping that clothes and household treasures weren’t deposited more than a few blocks, I trudged, still cursing, down the highway, flashlight in hand, dodging blowing debris and chasing down familiar clothing and broken boxes. 

On the road again, after several trips stashing things once again in the trailer, I felt utterly defeated. A sign with an arrow pointing to a rest stop just ahead was a welcome relief. Now held together at the back with bailing wire, I eased the orange monster, into a spot near the restrooms, killed the engine and curled up in a ball on the front seat, wishing I was a thumb sucker.

The wind not blowing on December 22, woke me up. Grateful for little things, with eyes half shut I stumbled to the restroom to splash water on my face. On the way back, I noticed the trailer sat a bit too low to the ground.  

Numbly I stood there, my eyes fixated on not one flat, but two. 

……to be continued