Dirty Harry Does Tires

August 3, 2021

Tire guys here don’t smile. I’m guessing it’s one of those cultural things that has been that way since the first cars came here eighty years ago.

A short time after I came here, I was driving the 1993 Ford Explorer that I call the Titanic back from the town of Cuautla. And I suddenly realised that the thumping I was hearing was due to one of its (very) old tires having developed a split. I drove back up the single-line highway on shredded rubber, hoping I hadn’t damaged the wheel beyond repair, a chorus of frustrated drivers honking at me all the way.

I knew there was a llanteria, a tire repair place, a short distance from the exit from the highway. I found it, and anxiously used my very limited Spanglish+hand-signals to explain to the owner, Snr. Garcia, the problem I had. I was doubly anxious because I only had 200 pesos on me, and if changing the tire cost more than that, I would have to get more cash in town.

Snr. Garcia did not smile. He was not reassuring. He just looked at the tire, went to the back of the truck, checked there was another tire concealed behind the back axle, and proceeded to switch the shredded rubber for the slightly less worn spare tire.

And then he looked at me, and said something I didn’t understand. And I didn’t understand it because ‘treinta’ is Spanish for ‘thirty,’ and I thought he meant 230, or more. But he meant what he said, which was about $2.50 Canadian at that point.

I drove off, grateful for his help, and baffled as to how anyone could survive charging ridiculously low prices. I don’t enjoy being soaked by people taking advantage of me, but equally, I figure a necessary service justifies a fair price.

Last October, the Titanic received a complete a new set of Pirelli tires, but recently the back rear tire began going flat every couple of days. I finally decided I had to get it fixed, and went to see Snr. Garcia as my first choice of helper. I actually passed him, walking to work. However, I waited for ten or fifteen minutes at his tienda, and he never appeared, so I decided to try elsewhere. As I headed off, he reappeared, having presumably stopped to talk to someone along his way. Reversing wasn’t easy at that location, though, so I headed off, to a llanteria closer to town.

The man there was on his phone when I arrived, and didn’t look up at me. That’s about as unMexican as you can get. 

“Straighten it” he finally said, for I was parked at an angle. I told him I had a suspected puncture, and he grunted. Was he, I wondered, a graduate of the Garcia charm school? 

He set to work taking the wheel off the car, and spraying it with that polymeric spray tire guys use. Soon, the point where the escaping air created bubbles was obvious, so he began the work of getting the tire off the wheel-rim. That is no light task.

After less than twenty minutes, he had removed the small nail that had caused the problem, patched the hole, reinflated the tire, and put the wheel back on the Titanic. He had said about six words all this time, and no complete sentences. Finally, he looked at me and said something I didn’t understand. Echoes, I thought, of my first visit to Snr. Garcia. I asked him to repeat it.

“Cincuenta,” he said again. Fifty pesos. Which, today, is around $3.20 Canadian. Then when I looked surprised, he added, “Barato,” which means “Low price.” 

I couldn’t complain, and I didn’t. I just wondered, yet again, why a man would work up a sweat yanking a wheel off a car, and a tire off and back onto the wheel, all for three bucks. The Dirty Harry act, I thought, with no hint of a smile, must be hard to maintain in this society. Car repairs here are always far cheaper than in the US or Canada, but surely tire guys like to eat and pay their rent …?

Or maybe, with their bulging muscles (tires are heavy) and tough line of work, they’re secretly making penance for a lifetime of overcharging tourists for something or other. The low wages must go with the lack of smiles.

Still, I can recommend either of these taciturn operatives to any friend around here who needs work done on a tire. The value for money ratio is incomparable.