ELMER part 2

In 1987 I made my second trek across the country in a horrible little gold colored Plymouth Horizon. During the last leg of this three-day midsummer drive to Los Angeles, the air conditioner in this shoebox of a car died. I pulled off the road in what I assumed would be a vain search of a service station with a real mechanic late on a Friday afternoon. I had never been in the thriving metropolis of Needles CA before. I thought it was a fictional place created by Peanuts author Charles Schultz for Snoopy’s desert dwelling brother Spike.

Amazingly enough, right off the highway I found a gas station with a mechanic who after glancing at the engine for less then two minutes shot me a big toothless grin and said the problem was a loose plate connected to the A.C. compressor. He said if I wanted to spend the night a truck could have the part delivered to him late in the morning and it would cost about $50 bucks to fix. If I wanted to continue the six hours to L.A., he said “a-long you don’t mind sweatn’, yuh can keep on-a driving without hurting nuttin, if yuh keeps a AC off.”

I am not sure if I did not trust him or I simply did not want to spend an extra day in the middle of nowhere but I opted to continue my drive. I figured I could get the job done under my warranty once I got to L.A. I waited a few hours till the sun went down and headed onward with the warm dry desert air blowing on my face. With the windows open the desolate and baron Mojave Desert seemed eerily alive.

A couple of days later the mechanics at an L.A. dealership had a different opinion of what the problem was and got the A.C. working again by ‘jiggling things’ around. About a week later I got a call from work and had to rush to a job in Georgia. A few miles into the trip the air conditioner died. I ended up driving cross-country in a gold colored Plymouth sauna. During the next month two other dealerships full of trained mechanics in Georgia tinkered around making minor adjustments also not related to the little compressor plate and got the AC working but not long after each time it soon again died.

Eventually I made it home to Florida where the dealership that sold the car told me the A.C. did not work because the compressor was shot and it would not be covered under the warranty. They also mentioned that this $575 repair could have been avoided if I would have had the plate connected to the compressor repaired before I put a few thousand miles on the car. In less then two minutes the toothless mechanic in Needles diagnosed the problem with more accuracy then three dealerships full of heavily trained repairmen.

Several years and two cars later, I found myself on the side of the road during a cool desert evening with a nasty blown out tire about an hour outside of Needles. Having just survived a series of self-inflicted panic attacks while changing a tire on the precipice of the Mojave Desert, I was now faced with a tough decision. Do I continue in the correct direction for unknown distance to find someone to fix my flat hoping the mini doughnut does not blow out stranding me with my car full of possessions in the middle of nowhere? Or do I admit there is no chance of actually reaching L.A. that night and head back to Needles the home of the mechanic that could have saved me months of grief and wasted money a few years earlier.

When you sit alone in a car driving for days on end your mind starts to play tricks on you. Your judgment gets a little out of whack. After 20 hours of driving I once stopped off at a diner outside of Tucson that I could swear was filled with the pig-faced people from a Twilight Zone episode. The longer the drive the stronger the desire is to reach your destination. No matter what. I knew that doubling back to Needles, the land of toothless genius mechanics was the smart, safe, sane decision. Yet even though I had recently passed a sign that said ‘next services 140 miles’, I opted to drive deeper into the lonely desert solely because it was the direction of my goal.

My Mazda’s manual said when driving on the mini-spare to stay under 40mph and not to go farther then 50 miles. I started to question my decision when a group of huge tractor trailers almost ran me off the road after quickly raced up behind me at double and triple my speed. Getting more concerned with each passing mile of nothingness, I plodded along about 30 miles until I saw a light off the side of the road. It was getting later and night had settled in when far off the side of the road a Shell sign became clear.

If I got off this exit and searched for the gas station, the window of time to find someone to fix my tire that night 60 miles down the road in the bigger city of Barstow would soon start to close. I gambled and took the empty exit and headed north towards the glowing Shell sign. Up the road a ways I turned a bend and there it was. A huge brightly lit open Shell service station was right in front of me. As I approached, I was elated to see a garage bay with the doors open and two walls filled with tires.

It was 7:00pm when I pulled up to the doors. I got out of the car and walked around to the front of the gas station and saw two men talking. When one jumped back into his car I approached the heavy set older man in a plaid shirt and jeans with suspenders. I told him my blowout story and asked if he could fix a flat tire. He did not say very much except that his name was Elmer and “yeah I can change a tire” but he made no movement to do so.

After I found several other creative ways to ask about repairing my tire, Elmer finally got the hint and asked me where my car was. I pointed to the only car in the entire gas station, “The Mazda over by the garage is mine”. Elmer took the long route winding through the front room of the gas station while I walked past the pumps over to my car. I removed the tire from my backseat where I had hastily shoved it back on the side of the road and rolled it into the building. In the light I saw that it was in pretty bad shape.

I looked around for Elmer but I could not see him. I wandered into the gas station backroom where he was loudly talking to himself. I told him I had the tire ready and he seemed pretty excited about that. Instead of heading out to the garage though, he sat down and started telling me stories about other people in distress that had wandered into the station. Then he told me about the man that owns the station. Then he told me how he came to live near there. Then he told me about other people in distress again. Eventually I reminded him enough times as to why I was there and we headed outside.

Elmer said the tire looked pretty bad and that it would be hard to fix. I told him if he thinks it’s not safe to drive on I would just buy a new one from him but he made it clear he wanted a shot at “mendin’ it”. Although it was obvious where the gaping hole was, he put more air in the tire and dropped it in a large bucket of water. Massive amounts of air gushed out of the obvious gash. He very slowly put the wheel on a machine that removed the tire from the rim. Moving at a pace slightly slower then Tim Conway’s old man character, he spent about 20 minutes smearing rubbery clear glue on the hole. I repeatedly suggested it might be easier/ safer/ smarter/ quicker to just get a new tire.

At about 8:00 Mrs. Elmer showed up in a well-worn old Chevy to help Elmer shut down the station and drive him home. The very short stocky woman in a housedress walked up and immediately started yelling at Elmer for trying to fix such a ‘destroyed’ tire. I had run out of ways to say maybe we should just get a new one from the giant wall of tires behind him, so I was thrilled when he listened to her suggestion of getting a new one.

Mrs. Elmer went inside to ‘count the bossman’s money’ while Elmer went to the big bolted down ‘tire conversion’ book, to find out what tire would fit my car. After checking and rechecking the numbers several times, he pulled about a half dozen tires off the wall finally settling on one from the top shelf. He said it was a $120 tire and I said I would go inside and pay his wife for it right away to save time.

When Mrs. Elmer and I finished we went out to check up on things. Elmer was in the process of scooping out what had to be the twentieth giant handful of lubricant from a white bucket and was smearing it all over the inside of the tire. Crazily enough while I was shocked at how much he had put on, Mrs. Elmer was equally as shocked at how little he used. As she urged him to slather more and more on, I started slowly backing up to take cover. Eventually they put this tire encrusted in slime on the machine that pops it onto the rim. I ducked when he started it and sure enough pounds of the stuff went flying in every direction as the tire worked its way into place. Both of them got hit with some of the glop but neither seemed to think this was an odd occurrence.

It was pushing 9:00 when Elmer finally rolled the new tire over to my car. To speed things up I had taken off the baby spare myself. It soon became very clear something was very wrong. The new tire was at least six inches bigger then the other tires. It was so big that it did not even fit in the wheel well, of course that did not stop him from trying to wedge it into place. While Mrs. Elmer yelled at him for screwing up, I went over to the bolted down conversion book to find the right tire. It turned out that not only did they not have the exact tire I needed, they did not have anything even remotely close to what might possibly fit on my car. I looked closely; most of the tires were for trucks.

It was near 9:30 and was obviously getting too late to buy a new tire either back in Needles (city of the anti-Elmer mechanics) or ahead in Barstow. My chance of getting to L.A. that night was quickly disappearing into the cool desert night as well. I dejectedly handed Mrs. Elmer my credit card again so she could run my refund while Elmer played another round of ‘splatter the lubricant around the garage’ as he removed the oversized truck tire from my rim.

I shoved my busted tire and rim into the backseat, politely said goodnight and got out of Elmer’s place. I headed down the highway at 45 rpm on my mini spare sure that it would explode any minute and now that it was so much later I would most certainly be stranded all night out in the middle of the desert. Stressed to the max, at 11:30 I got to Barstow but could not find anyplace open to sell me a tire. I found a hotel next door to a Good Year store and wandered out into the night to find some food and a beer.

Early the next morning I drove next door to buy a new tire but when I went to pay for it I realized that Mrs. Elmer had not returned my credit card to me. Eventually I tracked down the phone number of the station and I called Elmer. He looked around and said he found the card and I could pick it up anytime. I reminded him that I was just passing through but he said he would hold it for me.

I asked if he could mail the card back to me. I tried to give him the address but he said he needed to know my name even though it was on the card in front of him. I told him ‘Dan’ and started to spell my last name but he made me go back and spell ‘Dan’. Slowly. ‘D’ (pause) ‘A’ (pause) ‘N’ (pause)… It took some time but we got through the entire address and sure enough an envelope with the word ‘Dan’ spelled wrong on it, arrived a few days later with my card inside.

Over the years I have taken that same route several times and each drive I have wondered if I should go look for Elmer. I guess like looking for the restaurant of pig-faced people, some things are better left alone.