On Thursday night, I left my very part-time job exhausted. Eva had asked me to come pick her up at her father’s so he wouldn’t have to leave home again. I made a wrong turn on the drive I’ve made 1,000 times– and almost got lost.

I wasn’t wearing my good glasses. I didn’t have my readers and the perscription was a couple years older than my current one, but they were the glasses that best matched my outfit and I didn’t expect to be driving outside of my normal routine.

And then I reached the hill at the intersection 13th, West Lafayette Street and Bushkill Drive.

I hit the curb at this intersection fairly often; I think a lot of people do. Knock on wood– it’s the only thing I usually hit.

I last hit the curb in September 2024, causing a bad flat. This was about two days after I drove by myself from Atlanta home in one day, 13 hours! Without incident.

I couldn’t have been going that fast because I’m fairly certain I had stopped at the light. But somehow I not only hit the curb, I think I drove over it.

The tire pretty much exploded.

I pulled onto the side of the road and texted my daughter to contact AAA. She and her father came and Eva attempted to change the tire herself, and she got all the nuts off. But she didn’t have a good enough jack for a car parked on ice on a hill. And she didn’t chock the wheels.

So after the car almost rolled over her arm, we waited for AAA.

Eva took the car to Mavis the next day and as we knew, the tire was shot. But we… no, I mean I… bent the wheel rim.

I called the Volkswagen dealership and they said it would take 4 days to get the part. And I thought to myself, I have a 2015 Jetta. There’s got to be a million of them in junkyards with perfectly good wheels.

That was my dad’s voice.

So Eva called the Hubcap store, and an hour later we found ourselves in West Easton in their industrial park facing a perimeter-guarding goose and an ominous gate.

If you look at the photo, there’s a small triangular roof behind the garages. That’s where we needed to go.

And the building had a sign up at the crown of the roof but not on the door.

And when we walked in, they had our Jetta wheel rim on the floor. It was $175. I had $100 cash in my wallet that I intended to take to the bank and put the other $75 on my Amex.

And then Eva went to Mavis and made an appointment to get the wheel mounted the next day.

And then we had a snowstorm. Which Eva handled like a champ with our crappy spare tire

Eva returned to Mavis the next day and two tires (another tire had a bubble) and $415 later we had all four tires again.

Now it’s almost midnight on Monday, on the day by dad died four years ago, and I find myself wanting to tell him so badly:

You didn’t even have to tell me and I found a wheel rim for my car.

Or maybe he was with me all along.