One for the road

We went up to one of our favorite getaway places the other day, the wonderful Amish Country area in Pennsylvania.  We spent a couple of nights at the Amish Country motel, took a bus tour with a lady who spun story after story about the area as she drove a minibus full of us around, we shopped at outlet malls and antique stores and craft shops, and we dined at smorgasbords that, shall we say, fed us like a king and queen.  It's a wonderful place to be. The people you meet on the streets and in the stores and eateries are as friendly as any you've met anywhere, and the question keeps coming up in my mind: why didn't we move here 40 years ago?

Speaking of 40 years ago, that was when a car tire was mounted on a wheel and you put air in it when it started to look a little floppy, and it did not talk to you.  Now, of course, your tires send signals to your dashboard to let you know you need to insert some air, and some cars tell you when you're about to collide with a chestnut tree, and others allow the kids to watch "Frozen" for the 1,638th time in the back seat.  Let it go, I know.

But when it gets cold, your tires shrink a bit.  You men reading this know what I'm talking about here, things shrinking in the cold... So it was that the warning light on the dashboard, the one with the picture of a tire tread on it, lit up and demanded my attention.  I checked the tires that were on the car and all had 32 lbs of pressure, just fine.  So it was the spare, which hangs off the back of our RAV4, that was begging for air.  I pulled into Ronks Road Auto Service, catercornered from Miller's Smorgasbord, and the nice lady in the office sent a technician out to help me.  He rechecked all my tires and said it must have been the spare, so I removed the red jacket that the spare likes to wear and he pulled out the air hose and got me on the way again.



No charge, he said, but I still slipped him enough to get lunch on me.  And we went on our way thinking about the days when people actually took time to help another person.  It seems the smaller the town, the bigger the hearts.  

If you live in or visit that part of Lancaster County, I hope you'll take your auto repair needs to Mr Huber and his staff. I appreciate the help and I hope they know it!