Dear 70-year-old man in a leg brace,

I'm sorry for not being able to change a tire on my own car.

It was hot that day, late summer 2003, on that desert highway in Wyoming. And it was a rental car, actually, the convertible Mustang my wife and I were standing next to when you pulled onto the shoulder and parked behind us. (Did that car look fast? It was. Could it go 130 miles per hour on a straightaway? It could. Should I have pushed it to that speed? I should not have.)

The car had started to clunk and jerk a few miles back. We were down in the double digits by that time. (Thank God. I'm sure we would have exploded in flames had anything happened at a buck-thirty.) I'd kept going for a while, hoping to make it to a gas station, but it quickly became clear we were riding on the rim. I pulled off the road, stopped the car and got out.

We were on vacation, driving around the Cowboy West. The Rockies, Yellowstone, Devils Tower (yes, the big rock from Close Encounters), etc. Beautiful country, vast open spaces. But I've never felt more like Woody Allen, standing there frowning at that shredded tire-out of cell-phone service range, tumbleweed and cattle skulls littering the sun-baked landscape, vultures circling in the sky above. I didn't know what to do. There's a reason I live in New York. I can barely change the filter in our humidifier.

I'd read somewhere that it's safe to drink one's own urine for up to seven cycles in a dehydrative emergency. Still, we were very happy when we saw your pick-up coming towards us on the road.

Getting a first look at you through your windshield, I figured you'd maybe drive us to an auto shop in the nearest town-or maybe you'd have a CB radio and could call a tow-truck for help before mountain lions and coyotes came to eat us. You were small and wizened and I certainly would not have expected you to be able to fix a broken car. You asked what the problem was and I told you we had a flat tire and you asked me if I needed something called a "jack." I was embarrassed to tell you that I didn't know what that word meant. I was more embarrassed when you opened your door, swung out your left leg, which was encased in some sort of medical brace with bolts and metal hinges, hopped down from your seat, and hobbled your way over to the Mustang.

Under the rug in my trunk, as you showed me, there was a clever hidden compartment containing a spare tire, an X-shaped tool, and, lo-and-behold, a jack-which turned out to be an accordion-like mechanism with which a 70-year-old man in a leg brace can lift over a thousand pounds of metal off the ground. Magic, in other words.

Before I could figure out something to say or do that might have been in any way useful, you dropped to the ground, flipped over on your back, and slid yourself under the back of my car. I should really be doing this part, I thought, as you disappeared. But then, I had no idea what you were looking for. I remember watching the brace drag tracks in the sand and imagining how uncomfortable it must have been to have such a thing strapped over your dusty blue jeans in this heat. I was wearing shorts and flip-flops.

Once you'd found the right place to put the jack, you cranked up the chassis and had the new tire on and road-ready in a matter of minutes. You let me spin the X-shaped wrench a couple times, more for the sake of humoring me than anything else.

You didn't say much. Just smiled and nodded when I thanked you a hundred times and refused to take any of the money I offered for your trouble. You are the epitome of a good Samaritan. I am the epitome of lame.

Dave

Previously: Dear Step-Nephew