The time: 0945 Central Standard Time, current date
The place: Interstate 45, 20 miles north of Corsicana, 20 miles south of Dallas
The temperature: 30 degrees F.
The sound: BOOM shalacka lacka

I'd been up in Gainesville on Friday visiting a friend, and on my way back today I had a blowout on the left rear tire (or tyre) of my car. BOOOM shalacka lacka. What ho, thinks I, and steer gently to the side of the highway, pulling well over with my right side wheels in the grass.

The left rear tire has BLOWN OUT. Not a puncture, not a rip, not a gouge---it suddenly realized all the horrible things it had done in its life and spontaneously erupted into boom shalacka lackadom.

I grumble and say a couple of impolite words, dig through the trunk and retrieve the iron, the jack and the baby spare, and commence to changing the tire.

Natcherly, I am kilted. The hombrewed, shaggy tweed kilt I stitched up this month is not necessarily the thing to wear when you're changing your tire, in sub-freezing weather, on the open plains of North Texas with long haul truckers blowing past you, about two meters away.

But you know what? It worked pretty well. The tweed is heavy enough that it hung well, even with the draft from the passing trucks, and thick enough that me bum didn't get too cold laying down on the pavement to align the jack.

The ladies at the tire place twenty miles down the road thought I was the sweetest thing, too, and flirted me up until the tire (and it's offside twin) was replaced with a new one.