Well, this is my bead breaking story.
As I have mentioned, I have a hunting camp down in the swamps. My group hunts there along with a few others.
We all know each other, and most get along fine.
At that time, it adjoined a national forest, and we would get out of towners from time to time.
Didn't have too much trouble with them, other than the one year a pack of thieves showed up and I wound up shooting up their ride.
But this one year, about '82 this bunch of guys showed up in an orange and white Chevy.
Been 20 years, so I don't know the exact details, but the tires on this thing were strange.
I was running 12.50-33s, and they were not that tall. But they were on a set of rims about 4 inches wider than probably the max that they should have been mounted on.
I'm saying the bead was about 2 inches outside the tread width on each side.
That would not have been a big deal, except for the way these idiots drove.
They loved to run up and down the main road at high speed, sliding around the corners throwing mud everywhere.
I've done that, but not while people were standing on the side of the road, or when passing their trucks.
We got very very tired of getting mud splattered.
At that time, there was one gas station way back out in the woods that most of us used.
I knew the old couple that ran it.
Since there was no such thing as cell phones, I would ride out every other day or so to gas up and use the pay phone.
One evening I was doing that when that truck pulled in. They didn't ask permission, just pulled up under the canopy and started taking one of their wheels off.
Blocked the pumps on that side, of course.
Being nosy, I asked what was wrong.
It seems that all four tires were leaking around the bead. Apparently while sliding around the curves in the mud, they had managed to force some fine silt between the tire and the rim and so the bead was leaking.
They wanted to break them down and wash out the mud there at the station because he had air.
I finished gassing up, used the phone, and was talking to the owner of the station. He said he hoped they would finish up soon, because he wanted to close and go home.
I told him that they did not need gas, so he might as well go ahead.
When I came out, they were jumping up and down on the bead and whacking it with a hammer with no results.
At this point, a real evil thought occurred to me. Being younger, I gave in to temptation......
Told them I knew how to break that bead.
The bumper on that truck was not as wide as the 8 inch channel iron I am using now, but it was impressive and very strong.
I got them to roll the tire over to a big power pole, and hold it up so that the edge of the rim was just up against the bottom of my bumper with the rubber part in front of the bumper.
Then put the 205 in low range, and gently squished the tire up against the pole.
Popped the bead right off.
They were so grateful.
I went back to the hose with them, and sure enough, there was a fine layer of mud packed on the bead surface.
I pointed out to them, that the other tires were the same way, and as long as I was there........
They started scrambling.
Found some blocks, an old log, tire rim, finally enough to put under the axles and take the other three tires off.
We used my truck to break the beads on the other three.
They thanked me, made me feel a little guilty, not much........Then I drove off since it was getting dark on a Saturday night.
Of course I knew a couple of things they didn't.
First, the old couple did not open the station on Sunday.
Next, he always turned off the air compressor when he left because the hose blew one time and the compressor ran all night and ran up his electric bill.
And last, but not least, the carbon microphone out of the receiver in the only pay phone for miles was in my shirt pocket............
Don't know how long they stayed. Pretty sure they spent the night in their truck.
I do know that when I went back late Sunday afternoon to put the mic back in the phone, the truck was still there up on blocks and they were nowhere to be seen.
Never saw them back in the area again either.
Every couple of years or so, it bothers me that I don't feel guilty about doing that.....
Briefly.
