My Story

Years ago, I was an officer in the National Guard. We had a Battery in our Battalion located in Pleasanton, KS. I had been in Paola in the morning and was going down to Pleasanton for the afternoon. I got out my map and found a way I had never driven through the town of Osawatomie. When I got to the turnoff, I found the main road closed and the detour was a dirt road back behind the State Institute for the Criminally Insane. What the heck, I was only passing by so I didn't worry.

As I turned off onto the dirt road, the car felt strange and I soon realized that I had a flat tire. It had rained and the dirt road was pock marked with pot holes so I had to park near one hole to find a place I could jack the car up. I got out, popped the trunk and took out the spare, the jack and the tire iron. I took the tire iron up and took off the hub cap. I loosened the lug nuts, jacked up the car and then took the lug nuts off and put them in the hubcap. As I picked up the flat, I stepped on the edge of the hubcap and it threw the lug nuts into a mud puddle. As hard as I looked, I couldn't find those damned lug nuts. I am not sure what expletive I uttered but I'm sure there were some choice words used. Summarized I said, "What am I going to do now?"

To my amazement, from inside the fence a voice blurted out, "Take a lug nut off each of the other wheels put it on the spare tire location and drive into town and get five new lug nuts. I had no other alternative so I did just that. As I put the flat tire, the tire iron and the jack in the trunk and turned to speak to the person that had given me such good advice. I asked him how he came up with such a good answer to my problem. The simple answer from over the fence was, "I'm crazy not stupid."

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. MUD