Off the Editor’s Desk 10-26-2022

Plan to vote November 8th

Please plan to vote on November 8th. At this point of time I am not going to push who you should vote for as over the many preceding week I have pushed the need to make a change and we need to “Make America Great Again,” so vote. And that is all I am going to say.

I am going to talk about how a great week I had last week and how it can be messed up in a matter of minutes.

Every thing was going great last week and on Friday afternoon I meet with some great people at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Menomonie. They were working on an advertising program to promote their school’s “Wisconsin Parental Choice Program.” We have that advertising set to run early next year and I hope everyone looks for that program in this newspaper.

Returning to the office from Menomonie I took the time to mow my lawn at home and grind up all those leaves that have fallen and son Joel came and took the furniture off the deck for winter storage and when he got that done I suggested that we go to Fiddlers for a hamburger. Joel, Shawn and Zack then left for Elmwood and the Boyceville football game while I stayed for the Legion’s meat raffle. I took home a couple packages of meat.

I had Saturday all planned out and I would go to Hayward to pick up the pontoon that was at Hayward Marine for winterization. Well this is where things started to go wrong. I had coffee with the old guys at Brother’s Country Mart in Downing and then back home to take some thing to the recycling center and then back home to get the key for the cabin, which I could not find and after about ten minutes I found the key where I had left it, in the pocket of my jacket.

Off I headed up highway 128 for about three miles north of town when I remembered that I forgot the phone, so back to town. It was a great day for a drive, and I noticed all the ripe cornfields that were waiting to be harvested.

I am almost to Barronett when some thing struck my vehicle, a loud bang on the rear right side. I quickly stopped, found nothing on the road that I may have hit. Checked the vehicle over and found no damage, but as I got to Spooner, a warning light came on telling me that I had low air pressure in my right rear tire. I stopped at an auto parts store to inquire if there was a place in Spooner that could fix or change my tire. I was told there was a place, I was able to drive to it, but by then the tire pressure was down to 13 pounds, and to make things worse, they were closed.

So, I will need to change that tire, looked at the owners manual, but I would need to crawl under the vehicle to release the lock on the cable that held the spare in place and I did not know how to open the small door in the rear bumper to insert the crank to lower the tire.

As I am standing there pondering my predicament, my brain finally wakes up and I hear. “Dummy, you have On Star.”

So, quickly back into the drivers seat and push the On Star button and I am connected to a voice who ask how they can help. I have flat tire, I told her, and she asked if I was in a safe place and by then she knew what street I was parked on. She transferred me to another person, who asked my a couple of questions, like what tire it was and if there were any special locks on the studs and asked if the problem was on my 2015 gray Suburban and she asked for my cell phone number. Telling me she would find help and would contact me by text message.

About ten minutes latter I got a text saying something like, “because of labor shortages she was unable to find help,” but she would continue working on it. Another ten minutes passed and I got the same text, but within a minute of that, a phone call from a technician saying he was on the way, but he was in Rice Lake and would take about 30 to 45 minutes to arrive.

In no time the flat tire was removed and the spare was installed. The technician was not impressed with the spare as it was not same size and the other tires and I had told him that I was going to pull my pontoon home and he indicated that he probably would not pull a heavy object on that spare for close to one hundred miles. So, I headed to Glenwood City after being told that I should stop and every five miles and check to make sure the lug nuts were tight, and I did a couple of times. I will fetch the pontoon later this week.

I inquired about the cost, was told it was part of my plan, I tipped him with a picture of Jackson.

But, the fun was not over yet. Traveling south on highway 63 and being several miles north of Turtle Lake I caught up to a slow moving tanker truck and as I got behind him with the intention of passing, all of sudden my windshield was cover with a white liquid gunk and then that pungent smell entered the my vehicle and that is when I realized that I was behind a liquid manure transport. The vehicle behind me was also experiencing a messy windshield. It was not until we got to highway 8 that I was able to pass the stinky tank and there were many gallons of the manure spilt on the left outside of the tank. What a mess, and the driver should have known better than to drive that stink wagon down the highway,

So when I got back to Glenwood City I had to spend several minutes at the Quality Car Wash on West Oak Street and on Monday morning the tire ended up at Mike’s Auto Body to be repaired.

Happy Motoring!

Thanks for reading!     ~Carlton