January 26, 2000
DOWN HOME:
Her car's OK if you just
overlook the rusty wheel
___Unfortunately, I blew a chance to get Joanna the greatest stocking-stuffer of all time.
___That's easy for me to say now, a month after the fact. But I was pretty disappointed Christmas morning.
___My wife was a good girl last year. She really deserved a new hubcap.
___That's right. Hubcap.
___Somehow, she popped the hubcap off the rear tire on the driver's side of the family sedan back in the fall. This happened about two weeks after I found a hubcap for the front tire on the passenger's side.
MARV KNOX
Editor
___Of course, to hear her tell it, she had nothing to do with the loss of two hubcaps in the time it takes to say, "universal joint." They just fell off.
___And who'm I to dispute that fact? Maybe a ring of hubcap burglars filched them. Maybe they're deep in Mexico right now. I've seen that insurance commercial; I know all about stolen auto parts.
___The thing is, you'd think it'd be easy to buy a hubcap. And it probably is.
___Unless you want it to match the three other hubcaps on a 9-year-old family sedan. That's a challenge.
___The first time I bought a used hubcap made the task look deceptively easy. I let my "fingers do the walking" and found a neighborhood hubcap dealer who said he had 14 hubcaps, all like I needed. Cheap, too.
___Problem was, his shop was in somebody else's neighborhood. A neighborhood way across town.
___I called at noon, and he said, "Yeah, we got 14 of them hubcaps."
___By the time I got there after work, they were gone. He only had a single scratched-up hubcap, which he let me have for free. I'll tell you this: A free scratched-up hubcap is better looking than a rusty wheel.
___But since then, he's been hard-up for hubcaps. Can't keep his hands on them, so I can't get my hands on one.
___Oh, I can buy a whole set of new hubcaps. Then they'd all match, not to mention "shine like the top of the Chrysler building."
___But I like Jo's three other hubcaps, even the scratched-up one. Not to mention I don't want to spend $84, plus tax, for hubcaps.
___I'm sure the Lord has tried to teach me a lesson in all this, but I've had a hard time figuring out what it is.
___Probably it's patience. It's hard keeping the wheels of a 9-year-old car looking decent, so you've got to be patient. And patience is good for relating to people, many of whom are considerably older than 9.
___Maybe it's acceptance. Our car still is as reliable as it was before, even if I get annoyed when I look at the rear tire on the driver's side. And people aren't always what they look like, either. The question is: Are we useful to God, even if all our parts aren't spiffy?
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