A Nail in the Tire

A concrete forming nail had found its way into the sidewall of one of my truck tires. New Mexico law prohibits repair of such a puncture, so I either had to replace the tire or risk a blowout carrying heavy loads of drywall and lumber. I opted for the fix.

The only place close by was Ramah, a small Mormon town in the middle of the Ramah Navajo Reservation. So I took the truck and sat down in the waiting room to contemplate my fate while surfing the only wifi within twenty five miles.

As is the case in many more urban waiting rooms, the ubiquitous big screen TV was playing a loud, action-packed Hollywood blockbuster. This one was set in the land of mesas and cacti and big skies, not unlike the view out the window.  This particular film was Cowboys and Aliens, a Harrison Ford/Daniel Craig/beautiful- mysterious-woman-taking-on-the-evil-aliens flick. Think Sigourney Weaver.  Using aliens as villains is pretty standard fare in these politically correct times. And, by my standards,  C and A was an entertaining romp with all the nutrition or significance of cotton candy.

But the film’s main characters at this point had just been captured by a band of "wild Indians." The Indians were hooting and dancing in full war paint around the fire as they dragged the heroes – trussed up like turkeys – through the dust toward the fire. The whooping melee played loudly to the waiting room audience,  tugging all eyes to the screen.

Action-packed stories are a kind of heroin for attention in boring moments. All of us were glued. Not in a good way.

I looked around the room. I was the only white person in a room full of Navajo and Zuni customers. The men wore jeans, cowboy hats, and entered the room politely, with a gentle deference to the place and other waiting patrons. Some of the women wore traditional long, cloth skirts, scarves tied over their long hair; they wore silver and turquoise rings, bracelets, and belts.  Some of them recognized each other and passed knowing looks or quiet remarks.

Another white guy, a plump, clean-shaven, spectacled, freshly- pressed as an accountant, sat behind the sliding billing window, and worked on his computer. He only responded when taking our money. He could have been in Kansas for his bland middle American comfort and neutrality.

Then awareness of what was playing out on the screen spread through the waiting room like a noxious smell. I saw a veil of anger, sullen hardness come over the patrons' faces. These were friendly men and women being mocked, subtly.

The scene became suddenly uncomfortable, for me at least, as the others in the room spoke in languages I did not understand about the film. I was embarrassed at how the images portrayed these people’s tribes and historical roles. I was ashamed, embarrassed, self-conscious. I also felt the way I did driving seventy miles an hour on that nail punctured tire: borrowed time, I gotta fix this.

We viewers understood more than enough of the plight of the whites as they struggled to find the alien-kidnapped loved-ones, but nothing of the majority of people in the film – the Native Americans. The white characters had been doted upon, fleshed out, made real. We viewers liked them. The captors were carboard cutouts, stock pieces of movie furniture set up as just another obstacle to the heroes.
 

I wondered what it was like to bring your car to a shop where your people are being reduced, flattened, and stereotyped in the name of fun and entertainment.  Ugh!

I cringed and wanted to disappear into displays of shock absorbers and tool calendars.

Soon enough, the man behind the window called me to the front of the line to pay my bill. It was steep for a tire, but was way out here 150 miles from the nearest tire store. The reach of The Man is long and I stretch to touch his extended finger.

Glad to again be mobile and less in danger of catastrophic tire failure, I left the waiting room, the saturation of images, the ongoing re-make of old and tired type-casting, the furnace of mind-warping, and climbed into my quiet, simple  truck. This is beautiful land with beautiful, diverse, complicated people. Many of them I don't understand, but find them polite and generous and funny.

Three of my tires are still long in the tooth and short on tread, but one is new, tall in the tread, full of travel possibility. The representations we buy and and buy into, subtle though they might be in this age of “awareness,” were part of a prejudice grown way too long in the tooth and due for replacing.

I wondered how many nails I carried in the other tires, how long I was going to ride along on tired, out-dated, dry-rotted circles of unconscious chatter.