On the road before it gets light--breakfast in Norman--sunrise somewhere near Purcell--late fall scenery west of Ada--Christmas music on the radio--the Oklahoma hills otherwise known as the Arbuckle Mountains--a blow-out south of Ardmore near Lake Murray--
Good times! ...until the blow-out thing...
And this is exactly how it went down:
Grace is driving along and I'm trying to figure out how much longer it will take us to reach our destination which is Southeastern University in Durant, Oklahoma. I hear a noise from the back of the van and ask Grace if she heard it. She did.
"Should I slow down?"
"No," I say, "Speed up."
She doesn't, being a prudent and careful driver. The sound is suddenly louder and we decide to pull over to the side of the highway.
Sure enough, there is a problem; the tire is totally--down to the rim--FLAT. I begin to cry hysterically and wring my hands while Grace starts to look for the jack. No, that's not quite true. I rack my brain, trying to remember just who we know in the area that we could call for help while Grace finds the jack and pulls it out. After a quick phone consultation with my husband, we figure out how to get the tire out. We are trying to decide just exactly where to place the jack when an angel in a pickup truck pulls over and greets us with the words: "Need some help?"
We admit we do.
"Ok," he responds. "I would want somebody to help my wife and kids if something like this happened to them. I don't have to be anywhere in a hurry."
The "angel" was a mechanical engineer from Memphis, Tennessee who was working on a steel mill in Madill. He was originally from Wynnewood, Oklahoma and his parents still live in Oklahoma in the city of Tulsa.
After a few false starts with our jack--he thought it looked warped and I told him we generally used it to change tires on semi trucks--soon the old tire was off and the spare was on. Except for the fact that it had a gaping hole, the old tire actually looked a whole lot better than the spare tire, which was dry and crackly and amazingly small.
He threw the flat tire in the back of the van while we loaded up the jack. Then we turned around and he was gone. Well, to be honest, he didn't actually disappear or anything; he just hopped into his pickup and drove off. But I'm still of the opinion that he was an angel...
P.S. If you want to know about worms and calculus, here's the deal: worms can do calculus. I'm sorry but you are just going to have to take my word on this. Dr. Elliott, a math professor at Southeastern University said that worms can do calculus and who am I to question somebody who has a PHD.
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