AUTOMOBILE TAPE

Hanging on a peg on the wall of my garage are several rolls of tape: Gray duct tape, yellow duct tape, shipping tape, masking tape and a small, black roll of automobile tape. Automobile tape is difficult to find in a store because it is sold as "electrical tape" rather than "automobile tape".

Yesterday at work my pager went off. I looked at the message and noticed an unfamiliar phone number. I called it to find that it was Ashley's cell phone. She was calling from Ashland with a concern.

While driving south on I-5, a plastic storage container fell from a truck in front of her into her path and she could not avoid it. She hit the item and noticed that the car now sounded funny and felt funny. It was okay at slower speeds, she said, but something seemed wrong at freeway speeds.

I told her to take the back roads home and I would check it out after work. She arrived home with a front bumper that was broken in two places from the impact of the container she hit on the freeway. A panel was also bent downward on the underside of the car which, I suspected, flapped in the wind at freeway speeds.

So, I grabbed my roll of automobile tape, wrapped the bumper at both break points, bent the panel upward so that it wouldn't catch the wind, then took a test drive on the freeway.

Thanks to the miracle of automobile tape, the car now runs fine once again.

A peg in my garage hold a variety of useful rolls of tape.

Yesterday I needed automobile tape.

Barely visible and artistically camouflaged on the front bumper are two places repaired with automobile tape.

Artistry up close.

The repair job on the left is better than the repair job on the right and the panel behind the bumper is no longer bent down toward the road.

This automobile tape craftsmanship could mark the beginning of a new career for me.