A car's hubcap is somewhat like a necktie, not at all necessary unless you are in the company of others wearing one. Such it is when your car's missing a hubcap. When all are off, it sometimes takes on a rather rakish look, provided the vehicle can carry it off. Definitely not the case for an upper scale automobile.
Last year, we drove to the airport in Sioux Falls. When we got there, a car that had been following us all the way from downtown, stopped and the driver told us we had lost a hubcap and further, exactly where we had lost it. (The driver had no business at the airport, just wanted us to know we had lost a hubcap.) After seeing our guest off, we retraced our steps, following the good Samaritan's directions and sure enough, the hubcap had rolled from the roadway into a parking lot and there it lay (among a collection of other hubcaps). I put it back on there it stayed until one of those times when it just came off again. This time we didn't even miss it until we discovered it gone. Well such is life, but wait, there is more.
Since last Fall, I have been searching for one to match the other three, one that is of pie-pan design not the fancy fake spoke variety. In fact, I asked my son to look around Madison, Wisconsin to see if he could find one for my wife's birthday as a gift. (We always try to out-do each other in choice of gifts.) Just like me, he was unsuccessful, so come the birthday, she had to be disappointed receiving instead a collection of fifty cigarette lighters as a make-do substitute. Well while we were in Madison, we went to the world famous wildflower garden at the University and lo and behold, there in front of the building was a car just like ours, but instead of having three or four hubcaps, it had only one. Joy! I went around the garden asking everyone I saw, "who owns the Buick parked out front." A nice lady who as it turned out, was the wife of the agronomist who was in charge of the garden, confessed it was her car. So I asked, " ... since your are missing three hubcaps, how about selling me the last one?" She said, "No, we have just ordered three replacements". Her husband said, "don't know why we think that new hubcaps are going to stay on any better than the others did". Anyhow they wouldn't sell me the cap, but did give me the name of the garage where they had placed their order for replacements. (They were really nice pleasant people, and the garden was just beautiful in the last week of June with a wide variety of flowering plants, a captive stream with a fountain, a footbridge, gazebo, &c. We all enjoyed it.)
When we left Madison, we stopped by the garage where the hubcaps had been ordered. The lady there knew exactly who we were referring to (who else would order three hubcaps?). She got a good chuckle out of our hubcap story and tired to locate one for us but to no avail. On our leaving she offered to send us one if she found one at a good price. (Nice people those Wisconsin Badger fans.)
On our way back home through Iowa, we stopped at a traffic light in a small town. The pickup behind us honked, I got out and the driver pointed out that I was about to loose another hubcap. Thanking him, I removed the soon to be free hubcap and put it in the trunk for safe keeping. (Was really nice that the farmer would go to the trouble of calling attention to our potential loss.)
Back home in South Dakota, I bit the bullet and bought a set of four replacement hubcaps from KMart and put them on the car. While not original equipment they look OK. (Sort of like a tie from a discount store mismatched with a Brooks Brothers Suit.)
The following Tuesday, we drove down to Sioux City to do some shopping and would you believe, one of the new hubcaps came off on the interstate and in a flash it was gone forever!
Is God trying to tell us something? Maybe my wife's car just wasn't destined to have four hubcaps. At any rate, look at all the nice people we have met. Maybe, I'll just loosen another hubcap and let it go flying away. Looks like the best way to bring out the best in people and you don't have to wear a suit and tie.
ABOUT Joe Wortham