Every occurrence in my life provides details for the next chapter of the next book. When I need to write desperation into a scene, I think about changing the flat inside dual tire on the forty-foot flatbed trailer. It was at a truck stop in Southern Nebraska. It was dark. It was eight degrees Fahrenheit. The wind was blowing twenty miles an hour. All four kids were buckled in the pickup waiting for us. My fingers were brutally brittle with cold.

Another tire incident lives on in family lore as Boom, Flap, Flap, Flap Day. The weather that time was bright and sunny. The temperature was over a hundred Fahrenheit. The first blown tire of the day happened on the US highway. It was a front pickup tire. I pulled over and instructed all four of my very small kids to stand on the side of the road and look as pathetic as possible. They equated this with trying to get all the passing semi-trucks to blow their horns. Not one of those semi drivers stopped to help. In their defense, it was wheat harvest season, and they were all scurrying to get back to the field to load or get to the Co-op to unload. The second blown tire occurred an hour before sunset and twenty-five miles from Headquarters. Boom! The tire blew. Flap! Flap! Flap! The shreds of steel-belted rubber smacked against the trailer fender. To this day, we rarely pass that spot on the road without someone saying, “Boom! Flap! Flap! Flap!”

Not all of our hauling stories involve tires. On a trip from my ancestral home in Southwest Iowa to my marital home in Western Kansas, the pickup overheated. We were hauling an overly large, wind-catching load on the flatbed trailer. The temperature was over a hundred degrees. In order to keep moving, we had to stay under forty miles per hour, turn off the air conditioner and, in an effort to diffuse heat from the engine, turn on the heater. Yes, the heater. Full blast. We pointed all four vents toward the open windows and stopped a hundred miles from home at a lovely Hampton Inn. A Hampton Inn with air conditioning. And a swimming pool. Bernie’s brother was then an engineer for General Motors. Bernie called and asked him why GM used such flimsy material in the air vents because all of the fins in ours melted and fell out. Melted. Just like the rest of us.