The Tractor Tire Story

At any gathering (of which I am dragged into attending) my wife Tonya will do one of two things. She either gathers up three objects and says, "Do it!"  She means juggle.  Or she will ask me to tell "The Tractor Tire Story."

I was five years old.  (Tonya likes to tell people this actually happened last year, but it's really just more propaganda from her Sam's a Big Doodie-Head campaign.)  This was the mid-1970s, and my mom, dad, and I lived on the 100-Acre Farm, far away from mood rings, Planet of the Apes movies, and other forms of civilization.  Most families at that time, when going for a Sunday drive, all piled into a beaver-whacker station wagon and argued over who got dibs on the backward-facing seat.  Not us.  We piled on top of our red 1955 Farmall tractor and argued about who would not have to stand on the rear axle.  The tractor was designed with one seat, which was a small metal cup with holes in it designed by the Marquis de Sade in 1760 as a cure for people who whined about their hemorrhoids.  Racing like a herd of anesthetized three-toed sloths, we ventured off to circle the entire 100-Acre Farm.

The trip out passed largely uneventful.  Oh sure, the occasional fox squirrel barked long streams of squirrel profanity at us whenever we approached one of his secret nut hiding stashes.  This was okay, because we couldn't hear him. A 1955 Farmall tractor is pretty much a jangling conglomeration of various metal parts accompanied by a constant putt-putt-putt-putt-putt! from the smoke stack.

Dad, bless his heart, did try to mix things up to keep them interesting, especially whenever we found a freshly plowed field and he tried to cut doughnuts at exactly 1.2 miles per hour.

It was on the way back that things got really exciting.

I believe Mom first noticed the slight variation in our family-sized pocket of noise pollution.  It went like this:

Putt-putt-putt-putt-boing!

Putt-putt-putt-putt-boing!

Putt-putt-putt-putt-boing!

Mom said, "What's that?"

Dad replied, "WHAT?"

Mom repeated  louder, "What's that?  The boing!"

"The boy is standing on the axle!"

"No!  Boing!  Putt-putt-boing!"

We all began looking for the boing, starting with the obvious sources.  I had not smuggled any illicit noisy toys in my pockets, which Mom claimed were bigger inside like Doctor Who's TARDIS.  Nothing metal and springy flew from the engine.  No fox squirrels were close enough to pelt us with walnuts. 

"There!" Mom said.

A '55 Farmall doesn't really have a driver's side.  The De Sade hemorrhoid cup sits in the middle.  But if it did have a driver's side, then "There" was located on the front driver's side tire.

It was also coolest thing I had ever seen -- in all my five years.  This was better than the haircut I would soon give my nephew.  It was even better than when Mom found the copperhead under the mountain of Mason jars in the backyard and killed it with Dad's 12 gauge shotgun.  Glass went everywhere.  Grandma cackled, "Shoot 'em again!"

The tractor was twenty years old, and the tires were probably original. The Sunday joyrides and slow-motion stunt driving had apparently taken its toll.  A spot about the size of a nickel had worn through the tire -- but not the inner tube.  Inside air pressure pushed the inner tube through the hole so that it resembled a large, black nipple.  With each revolution of the tire, the nipple sprang up.

Putt-putt-putt-putt-boing!

Dad parked the tractor behind the barn when we reached the house.  He faced the nipple up.  Maybe he thought the position offered easier repair access or minimized the damage to the tube.  Regardless, it was also the optimal position to attract five-year-old eyes.  (I keep mentioning my age in an attempt to counter the effects of any Doodie-Head propaganda. Please let me know if it's working.)

Mom and Dad headed back toward the house and I followed.  But I kept looking back over my shoulder at the tractor nipple.  The distance between my parents and me began to increase.  Eventually, I felt brave enough to slip away and go back.

There it stood pointing to the sky, black and gloriously nipplely. I pinched it and twisted it, flipped it and pushed it back in the hole.  I did anything I could think of to make it go boing!  This had the potential for hours of entertainment.  Of course, being five, my attention span lasted slightly less than the length of a single boing.  Boredom set in and my imagination began to plot other fates for the nipple.

So,....

I doubt I'll ever know what possessed me to bite it.

It didn't go boing!

It went BOOM!

Luckily, my five-year-old chest cavity didn't go BOOM! with it. The doctor said I had saved myself by exhaling at exactly the same time, but maybe the jet of air pushed my head away. 

I stood up.  My eyes, I suspect, had grown to the size of those jumbo marshmallows everyone uses for s'mores.  A tiny, very quiet sound left my mouth: 

"Ow."

This was followed by:  "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!"

A long stream of Ahhs! followed me as I ran back to the house.  I felt like I had just swallowed the big Snoopy balloon at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  This frightened me even more, because I just knew I was floating like a little Snoopy or maybe running like Neil Armstrong on the Moon, covering about a mile-and-a-half between each stride.

Under the above conditions, your Mom probably won't be mad if you rip the screen door as you scurry into the house.  However, if when you step into the kitchen, she asks, "What's wrong?" and you answer by throwing up. . . .  Well, that will earn you a night in the hospital. 

(Oh, and just some friendly advice:  If you are ever hospitalized for biting a tractor tire, and the other bed in your room is occupied by a Missouri State Trooper, do not lean up at some point and loudly say, "Man, look at the chin on that guy!"  I'm sure for six months after that, neither Mom nor Dad drove any faster than 15 mph below the posted speed limit.)

I was fine.  The hospital released me the next day.  Mom and Dad did not let me out of their sight for the next 25 years.

It is my hope that now this story has been released into the wild, my son will read it when he is a little older.  All those pictures his mom made him pose for while standing beside tractors, will finally make sense.