I never would have thought tires could make such a difference, but I found out recently they are extreme difference makers.

It was two days before our annual June vacation (Pigeon Forge, here we come!) and as I was driving home from Madisonville, I heard the sound of something slapping a tune against the underside of the old Mazda SUV.

Being your typical American, I wanted to immediately put it out of my mind, so I told myself I’d ran over a small tree limb and gotten it stuck under there somehow. As soon as I got home, I reasoned, I could pull it out and everything would be fine again.

I also slowed down until the noise stopped.

But the problem with slowing down is that there’s only so much of it you can do before you come to a stop. So, after I reached a blistering speed of 22 mph I pulled off the road and found myself on my knees, looking at the driver’s side rear tire.

Now, I’m no mechanical expert. I’ve figured out how to change my air filter so I don’t have to pay the mechanic 12 bucks to do it, but once you get past that point, I’m pretty lost. But even I could see the tire was shedding its skin like a snake on a hot road. To be more precise, several filament thin wires had burst out of a section of the tire where a huge dent appeared. And the resulting piece of loose rubber was the culprit hitting the underside of the vehicle.

This had the potential to ruin our vacation, not because we’re too stupid to know how to buy tires, but because it was late on a Thursday (everything was already closed), we live in Sweetwater where only a handful of places sell tires and because of the problem we encountered with the very first place we called.

“New tires? Sure! We can get to you Monday at 3!”

This was a problem because by that time we planned to be sitting on a hotel balcony, eating donuts and watching fat people from Kentucky, Ohio and Florida struggle to get their suitcases out of their vehicles. And yes, I know how much was left unspoken in that previous sentence.

But on the third try (and the last try for tire places in Sweetwater) we found a place that could put on tires and do it in time for us to make our Saturday hotel reservations. And that was when I discovered the difference tires can make. My seven-year-old Mazda SUV, which had been riding like the proverbial hay wagon (I figured it was a shock or struts problem, neither of which we could afford to have fixed), suddenly rode like it was brand new off the showroom floor.

And so we made our way to Pigeon Forge where two young men helped me also realize just what a small world it is.

By the time these two young men approached me, we had been accosted so many times I figured they were going to offer me free Dollywood tickets in exchange for nothing more than a couple of hours spent listening to a time share presentation.

But they were just being friendly and as I waited for the wife to find her way out of the bathroom at Patriot Park, I came to find the young men were from Clinton, where I once spent two years working as a reporter. We talked about the town for a minute, then they asked who had run the sports department while I was there. I told them the name of the guy who was there when I started, but that wasn’t who they were referring to.

“No,” one of them said, “this guy was really cool and funny. He was at everything (this young man apparently played a lot of high school sports) and we’d always holler at him, hey-”

I knew who he was talking about before he was even halfway through the sentence. For nearly 17 years of my life, there was only one name that could automatically solicit a smile, a laugh and a fun memory when it was mentioned.

“-Tinker, take our picture and put it in the paper!” the young man finished. “Man, we were always glad to see Tinker coming. He always did what he said he’d do.”

Unfortunately, I had to let them know Tinker is no longer with us, and they appeared appropriately dismayed, even though it had been about seven years since Tinker left Clinton. And it was almost two years exactly since Tinker died that we ran into the young men.

I haven’t stopped thinking about one of my better friends in the two years since he left. Maybe this was his way of letting me know he hasn’t stopped thinking about me.

But it was a good vacation. When’s the next one?

michael.thomason@advocate anddemocrat.com | 442-4575