We took the shorter of two roads on our way to Livesay Orchards, the largest Peach Farm in Oklahoma, followed by a trip to the town of Porter. She was driving.
We went down and hit Old Porter Road. Gravel, no pavement, it arched around, took a couple of quick turns, heard a “Bing” go off on the dash, looked at each other, and she said “We’ve not had a problem since February, here we are in the middle of nowhere and the tire is low!”
Took a couple of more turns, and all of a sudden there was a new noise. A “kathunk”. The road was wide enough for our car, and half of one coming the other direction. I jumped out, looked at the back tire and saw that it was flat. Back inside, I checked the GPS, saw we were a mile and a half from the peach farm, six miles from town, and as far out in the woods as we wanted to be from anywhere. We pulled out into a rock driveway.
I opened the back door, peeled the donut out of the back, got the jack out, and this woman and her husband were suddenly standing beside us. No kidding. I looked and she started talking. Rapidly.
“We saw you pull over. It’s terrible to get a flat out here, we live at the next crossing, you go right about a half mile and we are on the left. It’s a beautiful day! I told my husband he had to change your tire!!! And he said he would, we have three kids in the car, I don’t know why we came this away, we normally go the other way, but we did, and we found you!” She said in four seconds.
Her husband was standing between me and the flat tire, both hands out, looked at me, raised his hands, said “Would you like to get this done quickly?”, and I handed him the jack and handle.
He got down, made short work of it, six minutes later handed me the jack back and said “There you go!”
His wife was carrying a twelve week old puppy, and she had kept a steady pace of talking, and she finished with this:
“Oh that was so much fun helping you guys out, it was as if the Lord said that we should go this way instead of the other, and bam! here you were, and I have to say this,(sort of under her breath but not really) “I told my husband that we can’t let that old man change a tire out in this heat and all…” .
We got peaches and a watermelon, made it to the Peach Festival, listened to music for four hours, and drove home on the interstate system. The “Old Man” needed some rest.
Ralph Peck
Photo by Ralph Peck
In the backwoods of Porter Oklahoma
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