The Airwalk Angel

Last week my friend Rachel and I decided to go to the casino just outside of Joplin for a little gambling fun. Little did we know how much "fun" we would have. Anyway, after about getting into one car accident, we were on the interstate headed towards our destination. We were riding in Rachel's car and cruising along smoothly when all of a sudden, we hear a thud, thud, thud sound. I asked Rachel if she thought we had a flat tire, and she said that the rim was bent on the back tire of the driver's side, and it caused the tire to deflate a little. She said that we we stop at the next gas station along the way and air it up again.

Well, the next gas station was in the middle of nowhere. It was a small Sinclair station about twenty miles away from Joplin. When we pulled up there was no obvious air pump, but Rachel made me get out in the literally two degree weather and ask the cashier if they had air. He told me that they did, and he handed me the hose to hook up outside.

I went back out and Rachel got out of the car to try and air up the tire. I hooked up the hose, and Rachel commenced airing the tire up. All was going great except for one thing, the tire was not airing up. Rachel said she didn't know if she was doing it right since the hose was different than most we had seen before. Then an old man got out of his truck and walked over, asking if we needed help. He took over the hose and tried to air up the tire. He even tried using Rachel's can of Fix-A-Flat, but nothing was working. Well, then he felt around the tire and said that there was a huge gash in the back of the tire and asked if we had a spare. Thankfully, Rachel did have a spare. The old man then proceeded to change the tire for us in the extreme cold. By this time I could no longer feel my face.

Once he was done, he told us that the spare should be fine to get us by until we got the car to a garage the next day. We thanked him over and over, because if he hadn't changed the tire for us we would have had to call another friend back in Springfield which was almost an hour away.

When we got in the car and were once again on our way again, Rachel asked if I had noticed the man's shoes. I said that I didn't, and she told me that they were Airwalks, which are a brand of skate shoes Rachel likes. We both found it extremely weird that he was wearing skate shoes. So from that point on, the old man was our Airwalk angel. He helped us in a time of need, and truly proved that people can be good and act selflessly.