My elementary school once had a contest called “A Million Uses” with the theme being to devise the most creative reuse of a common, everyday item. Straightaway, I thought about the four bald tires I often play with on my back porch. There was the obvious refashioning of the rubber into a chair or table, or even a hillside roller coaster cart. Maybe with a quick slap of paint it’d be pretty, like one of them recycled garden planters parked right beside the classic backyard tire swing.
If we were giants, then we would use a tire to roll our bread or even as an engagement ring. Maybe fashion a pair of earrings should we get lucky and find a stray pair lying around. Likewise if we were little, the tire becomes a dwelling for our whole family. A mini-sized Colosseum where we gathered with friends to watch tiny gladiators attack each other with toothpicks.
In my various imaginings, I was ignorant of the real nature of the thing. Ashtray stink on a summer day. Mothball stench when covered in winter’s white. I never stopped to consider that as a kid, I was playing with the filth of a million roads stuck in their crisscrossed crevices like pulled pork in the teeth. For my entire childhood, I had been hoping around on the remains of road kill like it was a nursery. Now, when I look out my window, I see a pile up: a tangled mass of mismatched aliens towering higher than the trees.
Gas was a luxury by the year I turned nineteen. That’s when the city started dumping tires like roadside carcasses in a vacant lot behind our home. Now everyday I’ve got a mountain of rubber out my living room window. Last year, a couple of neighborhood kids got hurt climbing around on them, so nowadays most people steer clear.
I just wish I remembered my contest idea. I get tired of tires…know what I mean? People step away from their cars like bad relationships these days, forget the whole thing, but I’ve realized even when we do that, when we turn our back on something we once loved, somebody somewhere gets left with the scrap parts.
© 2026 | K.F. Hartless
Cover Art: “Oxford Tire Pile #8”; Westley, California, 1999 (Edward Burtynsky / Howard Greenberg Gallery NY)
Yard Sale of Thoughts 
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