A Funny Thing Happened on the Way From the Farm

Neon Memes • Monday afternoon, as a four-day vacation at my family's homestead in Ste. Genevieve, Mo., ended, I discovered the front passenger-side tire of my 2002 ZX2 had flattened. By the time I'd driven a mile down Sugar Bottom Road, deduced with Holmesian perspicacity that something had gone awry and inched back to the farm, in fact, the whitewall's inside rim felt mangled beyond repair. Moreover, a quick call to our longtime family mechanics at Speed Service Center (8576 Highway 61, 573.483.9094) established that they had no replacement in stock. So I had to borrow my mother's 1991 LTD Crown Victoria XL. "The Boat." Auto proprioceptively double the width of my ZX2. Only slightly shorter than a semi. Equipped with innumerable electronic extras―including, I suspect, trunk-based ground-to-air missiles. The Boat, yes. I drove back to St. Louis like a granny on diazepam. Tuesday I duplicated that "Valium nana" performance on the commute both to and from the office―and yesterday evening, when I traded the LTD for the ZX2 with my parents, I could've kissed the latter vehicle's radiator. (But I didn't. I mean, what kinda wuss d'you take me for?) ―Bryan A. Hollerbach, Managing Editor