September 2022 – Travels with Fred

16 September 2022

It’s probably been 25 years since I’ve changed a tire but I did today. With Fiona looking stronger and heading westward, I decided to go top off the jeep with diesel. As I backed out of the garage, the warning light for my tires came on and the left rear was reading zero pounds per square inch. I thought it a mistake and when I got out and looked, it was flat as a pancake. I must have picked up a nail somewhere.

I find procrastination sometimes beneficial. It allowed me to think about taking my flat to Ovidios on US 441 in Hollywood. I finally thought it through and decided to change the flat to the spare today and take it in early tomorrow to get the flat fixed.

I used to change tires frequently and not always due to flats. I had a red 1985 Chevrolet pickup (three on the column) and I would rotate the tires with that.

It was fun to drive up to a valet and watch them try to shift gears on a column. They had no idea where reverse, first, second or third were on the column.

If you ever changed a tire, you know one real problem is mechanics often use pneumatic wrenches to tighten the lug nuts on the tire. They can be almost impossible to loosen. When I had the red pickup, I purchased a four sided lug wrench which gave me more torque (thanks Leon Tadlock for that physics lesson) and I could loosen the lug nuts a little easier.

is the torque vector and $\tau$ is the magnitude of the torque,
$\mathbf {r}$ is the position vector (a vector from the point about which the torque is being measured to the point where the force is applied),
$\mathbf {F}$ is the force vector,
$\times$ denotes the cross product, which produces a vector that is perpendicular to both r and F following the right-hand rule,
$\theta$ is the angle between the force vector and the lever arm vector.

https://www.raneystruckparts.com/heavy-duty-tire-iron-lug-wrench-4-way/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI2_7L97Oa-gIVERvUAR2-swMdEAQYAiABEgLhKPD_BwE

Sadly, it was stolen out of my truck one night. I sold the red truck to a fellow faculty member. He said he wanted something he could work on instead of having to take to the dealer. It didn’t have a computer and it was a flat head six cylinder that he was familiar with. When he bought it from me, that’s when I purchased a white 95 Chevy pickup. (I tend to hold on to vehicles for a long time.)

I was used to rotating the tires on the red pickup and I continued that tradition with the white one. It was shortly after I moved in to my current home (27 years ago) that I last rotated the tires. Ever since then, I’ve always let the dealership do the job for me. I’ve continued with that with the jeep.

Every vehicle I’ve owned had a different jack, lug wrench, place to position the jack under the vehicle chasis, different storage locations for the jack and lug wrench depending on the vehicle and different instructions on how to change the tire in the vehicle owner’s manual.

In the red pickup, the jack and lug wrench were under the hood. In the white pickup, it was behind the seat. In the jeep, it’s in the cargo space in the rear under a panel. For the pickups, I had full size spares which were kept under the bed of the truck. (Weirdly, one year I had a blow out of the spare when it was stored under the truck.) The jeep has a temporary, albeit full size spare under the panel and the jack and lug wrench are found with the spare.

I always check out the owner’s manual and it indicated where the jack was to be placed for a rear flat. The front tires have their own location. Even more peculiar was the spare should only be used for rear flats. If the front is flat, you are required to remove a rear tire and place it on the front and then use the spare for the rear you replaced to the front. Strange!

It took a while to raise the jeep high enough to get the spare to begin to lift off the ground. Before I did get it high enough, I loosened the lug nuts and surprisingly, I was able to do it without too much exertion. In times past, I’ve had to put a pipe on the end of the lug wrench to give me more torque (again, thanks Leon).

After loosening the lug nuts, I continued to raise the rear and easily removed the lug nuts, pulled the flat off and with a lot of effort, lift the spare into place and hand tighten the lug nuts. Then I let the jeep down and tightened the lugs. All in all, it probably took me around 45 minutes to complete the job. Tomorrow, I’ll take the flat in to be repaired. The spare is good for 50 miles at 55 mph. After that, all bets are off.

I was pleased that I remembered what to do and how to do it. I forgot how heavy tires are and I’ll more than appreciate Ovidios putting the spare back in the space under the panel. It was all I could do to lift the flat back into the cargo space.

15 September 2021

I confess I have an affinity for military bases. I come by it naturally since my Dad was in the Army Reserve when the Korean Conflict broke out in 1950. He was called up and I suppose the army wanted to make sure the reserve was ready, so they sent them to military bases for training.

The first I remember was Fort Rucker, Alabama. What brought this to mind was talking to a guy on Tuesday who had just finished with a massage therapist and I was waiting for mine therapist to call me back to begin my massage. He commented on his southern accent so I, of course, asked where he was from. He said Dothan, Alabama and I told him of my Dad being stationed near there at Fort Rucker. From there, we got off onto the size of eastern Diamondback rattlesnakes in the woods around Fort Rucker and how they were often as big around as a weightlifter’s biceps and long enough to hang over road signs and almost touch the ground.

In all honesty, that’s about the only thing I remember about Fort Rucker. I probably was only 3 or 4 years old. Maybe the snakes are why I studied biology.

Dad’s next duty station was Fort Benning, Georgia. I remember his office when Archie and I were there one day during a thunderstorm. Dad was on the phone and lightning struck the telephone pole outside. The surge in electricity over the phone knocked Dad across the room. Ever since then I don’t talk on land lines during thunderstorms.

Fort Benning Chapel. Once you seen one, you’ve all of them in the military.

My most pleasant memories were of Fort Bragg. We lived in married officers housing near a lake. Archie, Dad and I would walk down to the lake (we had our own private pier, it seemed). Dad had a square minnow net and we would put bread crumbs in it and lower it into the lake enough so minnows would swim into it and feed on the bread crumbs. We’d then lift it up and use the minnows as bait. I caught my very first bass off that pier, probably age 4.

That Christmas, I got a Lincoln log set and Archie got an erector set. I soon got tired of the Lincoln logs and Archie soon got tired of the erector set and I took over. I think that was probably the happiest time in my life. Dad eventually trusted us enough to go fish in the lake by ourselves (Archie had to be with me since he was the ripe old age of 10). In the summer, we would swim off that pier.

From there, we headed to Aberdeen Proving Grounds near Havre de Grace, Maryland. The memories there are snow, snow and more snow. We lived in a trailer with an oil furnace that would make Thor hold his hands over his ears. When Dad went to light it, he learned to send me outdoors until it quit the noise. That’s also where I got my love of train travel. Before we moved to Havre de Grace, we were back in Morton, Mississippi and we road the train from Morton to Havre de Grace. I’ve loved train travel ever since.

Dad and I built the snowman. Archie knocked it down.

I graduated Ole Miss in 1970 and was sent to Coast Guard boot camp in Alameda California at the Coast Guard Base Alameda. Boot camp wasn’t pleasant but when we had down time, we got to visit the PX, the movie theater, and the enlisted mens club. We even got liberty in San Francisco one day which started my love affair with that city. Movies on the base were twenty-five cents, so was the beer at the enlisted mens club. Prices were exceptionally cheap at the PX. In reality, you couldn’t tell the difference between the army military bases in the 50’s and the CG base in Alameda in the 70’s. This was the age of Vietnam and Congress wasn’t too thrilled with the war and they pretty much starved the bases financially. You could take the movie theater at Alameda and compare to any movie theaters in the army bases of the 50’s and they all looked the same.

At Fort Ord, while in boot camp, I learned to shoot the 45 caliber automatic and the M-15 (back then, the M-16 was in production but not in much use in the CG). The Coast Guard put us on a school bus and drove us down to Fort Ord. I’m pleased to say I shot expert on both weapons.

After boot camp, I was sent to Governor’s Island, New York for radio school. That was a dream post for me. I had a meal ticket to the cooking school, a free ferry service to Manhattan, and free broadway shows compliments of the USO.

Governors Island from One Word Trading Center

Again, you really can’t tell one military base from the other other than they may be different branches of the service. There is a military style that is quite unique and easily recognized. Since Governor’s Island was previously an old Army base, I was right at home.

From Governors Island I was sent to Corpus Christi. There wasn’t much of a base where the CGC Reliance was docked – just mostly storage spaces for buoy tenders and the CG radio station. However, at the other end of Corpus was Naval Air Station Corpus Christi and I was often sent over there by the Reliance or shopped the PX there. All medical care for us coasties was at Naval Air CC.

From the Reliance, I was sent to CG Communications Station New Orleans at Belle Chase, Louisiana. The base was the only “modern” military facility I’ve ever been stationed with buildings built in the 60’s. It was originally an ammunition depot for the U.S. Navy. There were about 20 or 30 bunkers all over the base that used to house naval ordinance. New Orleans was about a 30 minute drive (most of that time was getting off the base) and every day off, I usually went into the city.

Outside the “modern” radio shack at CommSta New Orleans

Me sitting voice watch at CommSta New Orleans

Years later, when living with my cousin Jo in San Antonio, I would go to Fort Sam Houston. Not for nostalgia sake but Sam Houston would often host art exhibits by military and I would go over to their openings.

Most of the army bases had wooden structures: barracks, PX’s, officers clubs, enlisted mens clubs, chapels, theaters, etc. Governors Island was mostly brick buildings. Alameda had brick buildings but most of the enlisted barracks were wooden and left over from WWII. Yet, there was a unifying architecture to all of the places I was stationed. No frills, basic, and easy to maintain. Sounds like the military to me!

List of military bases:

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30

Month: September 2022

Everything Fred – Part 60

Everything Fred – Part 59