Connie’s old beater Ford pickup catches on fire

My neighbor brings his aluminum cans over to my carport for me to recycle and since he likes his beer, my carport was starting to smell like a brewery. So yesterday I washed the bird doo doo off the side mirrors and the doors of my truck, bagged up the cans for recycling and threw them in the back.
It had been quite awhile since it had been driven, due to its temper-mentality of not starting all the time until I finally got a new battery for it. The truck had not been to town since last summer and I wasn’t sure I trusted it. I grabbed a water bottle, a magazine, made sure my cell phone was charged and wrote down my mechanic’s phone number and stuck it in my purse just in case I needed it.
Off I went, driving the 15 miles to town doing 45 miles an hour on the four lane highway, with the mantra, “Remember, it’s a stick-5 on the floor, clutch, shift”. I noticed the air conditioner wasn’t working and the wind shield wipers were glued to the windshield except for a couple of stray pieces that blew off, and the rain protector on one window was about ready to blow off too, but there were no red lights lit on the dashboard, yippee!
After about 10 miles, there was a bit of a strange smell of something burning, but I brushed it aside, attributing it to a faulty air conditioner, got to the metal recycling place, truck looked fine, got the cans dropped off and started on the journey home with the intent of stopping at the garage and having them put new windshield wipers on.
About 3 miles from the garage the smell started again and got really strong and when I pulled in to the garage, there was smelly smoke rolling from the right front tire and a little old lady sitting at a picnic table out front yelled “Your tire is on fire!”. She told me she used to raise stock cars and told me exactly what was wrong with it. (She turned out to be younger than me, I have aged with grace, thank you Grace). It got fixed, she was right, it was a caliper and I was back on the road to home a couple of hours later. My guardian spirit watches out for me, much gratitude to her.