After reading the Jan. 24 story by Dominick Raff, it brought back a tire-changing ordeal I went through when I was a senior in high school during 1959.
I used my older brother’s 1932 five-window as a shop project. I had auto shop for one period and agriculture shop for two periods. On top of that, we had a great teacher who let us work on such things.
One day, the front tires were gone from the coupe and I was up the creek. My budget was next to nothing, so I set out to find our tires. (We lived in the small farm town of Sunnyside, Wash., with a population 4,500, so it didn’t take a real **** Tracy to solve such a complex crime.)
A couple of days later, I saw a ’28 Ford pickup that belonged to an 11th grader in our school. It usually had a full set of original tires and wheels.
But there it sat with a pair of red 1950 Merc 6.70 x 15 wide whitewalls at its front. What to do?
I went to the police and asked what they could do to help me get my tires back.
They asked me what the serial numbers were for my tires. Right! I had no idea, and as I remember, the serial numbers for the vehicles themselves were no big deal in the good old days.
I took the law into my own hands and with the help of a friend, a jack, lug wrench and a couple of wood blocks we had our tires back.
And we all lived happily ever after!
Al Albrecht
Chatteroy, Wash.