INTO THE SUNSET

Reading e-mails of the trials and tribulations of interrupted travel by several of my Snowbird friends driving to Florida reminded me of a trip I took from Topeka, Kansas to Littleton, Colorado in August of 1967.

After getting my family settled in Littleton and having finished ground school with Frontier Airlines, I went back to Topeka to retrieve my 18 foot Glaspar boat and Alligator trailer, left in storage. My twenty-year-old nephew, Joey, visiting from New Jersey, offered to accompany me on the trip which I gladly accepted. I told Joey he would come in handy in the event we were attacked by hostile Indians. He studied my face but did not reply. I wondered how long it would be before he recognized my sense of humor. He was short of stature, a little on the chubby side, freckles, with brown curly hair. A bit too much pasta in his diet, I thought.

I drove a blue, 1963 Chevy Biscayne which had the original tires and many, many miles of wear. The trailer was a one-axle with two wheels, and due to little use, the tires looked like new.

Driving across Kansas in the middle of August with road temperatures above 120 degrees, pulling a boat and trailer, was really bad timing. Couple that with no air conditioning and bad tires, but who knew?

I liked the idea of having a young man riding shotgun. What I didn't know was that he had absolutely no knowledge of mechanics or manual labor. This trip proved to be a real education for both of us.

At high noon, just past Hays, Kansas, west bound, with speed matching the route 70 sign, my boat trailer began to fishtail. I heard a flapping noise as I slowed down. I pulled over and stopped on the shoulder. My left trailer tire had lost all the rubber around the middle. Joking, I said to Joey, "Look at the mess you got me into this time, Toto," borrowing a line from Laurel and Hardy.

He laughed and said, "It's Ollie."

I said, "Yeah, but we're in Kansas."

He shrugged his shoulders not understanding the connection between Toto and Ollie.

Looking back up the highway I saw a trail of rubber debris. No big deal, I thought, as I dug out the small trailer spare. However, even before I had started to do the repair, perspiration flowed like a light April shower. I removed my sweat-covered sun glasses and shaded my face with my hand as I looked up at the bright, blue, cloudless sky.

"Something not right here, Joey," I said, looking at the huge sun-flowers, the size of dinner plates, growing along the road side and the miles of harvested decaying corn stalks. Outside of an occasional car going by, there wasn't any sign of life, not even a bird. "There's no wind, there's no breeze, there's no air flow."

"What's so unusual about that?" Joey asked, leaning against the hot car. He pulled away quickly to avoid being burned. Prior to his journey to Colorado he had never gone farther west than Trenton, New Jersey.

"We need some air conditioning." I grunted and shook my head. "Before moving to Colorado I lived in Topeka three years where the wind blew all the time. I had more fishing trips and picnics ruined by wind then I care to remember. If it wasn't the wind, it was tornadoes!" I winked at Joey. "Toto, remember?"

Joey laughed and said, "Wizard of Oz, right?" catching my drift.

"This tire change on the trailer is a one man job," I said. "There's no sense in both of us getting fried in the hot sun. You can sit in the car and find a good music radio station. Play it loud so we both can hear it."

I changed the tire listening to "Elvis" and in about twenty minutes we were on our way. I was soaked.

As we accelerated down the highway, I kept my speed at sixty miles per hour. With all the windows down and the wind blowing through our hair, I became totally relaxed. Life is good, I thought. Suddenly, I felt a little quiver in the steering wheel, slowed down, pulled over and discovered a left, rear, flat tire on the Chevy. I found the appropriate tools, a tire iron and a lug wrench, and handed them to my faithful sidekick.

"What are these for?" Toto asked.

"You can remove the hub cap and loosen the nuts while I dig out the spare."

Toto stood there scratching his head. He didn't know where to start. I took over and finished the tire change while Toto looked on.

As we drove down the highway once more Joey eyed me up and down and said, "You look like you've taken a steam bath with your clothes on."

"I feel like it, too," I said. "I'll be okay with the cooling effects of the wind."

Once again, life is pretty good, but I prayed for a gas station to get the flat tire repaired The highway heat was doing a real number on those old tires so I slowed once more to fifty-five miles per hour. I could tolerate this speed until I got the tire repaired. We were on the outskirts of a small town called Teeny-weeny or Haweeny when it happened.

You guessed it! The right rear tire went flat. I pulled over and stopped. I sat there in silence, seething in my own sweat.

"This is really tiring me out," Toto mumbled. "We'll never get to Littleton at this rate."

Tiring me out? I thought. Is he actually trying to be funny?

Just seconds ago I had seen a landmark that reminded me of Holcomb, Kansas, where a murder had taken place. Truman Capote wrote a book about it called "Murder in Cold Blood," in which two ex-convicts killed an elderly couple for their money. I remember asking myself, "How could anyone do something like that?" Well, the feeling I experienced at that moment made it easy for me to understand. I looked at Toto and shook my head, embarrassed at what I was thinking.

I told Toto to stay with the car while I took the flat tire into the small town. I rolled the tire down the road and chuckled to myself as I thought of an old joke about a traveling salesman in a similar predicament. As he pushed his flat tire ahead of him down a farm road he came across an old gentleman on a tractor. He asked him, "How far is it to the next gas station?"

The farmer rubbed his chin and said, "Oh, I'm guessin' it's not very far, as the crow flys."

"Well, I'm happy to hear that," the salesman said, pointing at his flat tire. "But how far would it be if that crow was pushing a flat tire?"

It was the middle of the afternoon now and still not a cloud in the sky. I thought of stripping down to my shorts. I had to laugh at that thought because I could visualize being arrested by a "Mayberry" type police officer for being a pervert. I'm in jail and Toto's stomach is growling because he's hungry, thinking, Where's my driver?

I found a station, had my tire repaired, and the owner's young son offered to drive me back to my car. It was a good move on his part because he could then repair my other tire and fill up my gas tank. Once back at his station, I reconsidered my predicament and bought two new tires while Toto continued to look on.

The rest of the trip was uneventful with Toto asleep most of the way.

However, I did enjoy listening to Toto tell everyone about how, "WE," in the heat of the scorching Kansas sun, defied the elements and rode off into the sunset. Come to think of it, the sun was actually setting as we crossed into Colorful Colorado.