I recently went to the shoe store to buy a new pair of shoes.

I told the salesperson I wanted the same as I was wearing. He said they didn’t have it in stock, but he could show me a different shoe, just to see how I liked it. I didn’t, and asked when the one I wanted would be available. The answer was that the store had been allocated so many pairs of that particular shoe, which would arrive sometime in a month or two, not sure when. As for color, brown is not available, would I settle for cordovan?

“How much?” I asked.

“Well,” the salesman replied, “today’s price is $300, but we don’t know what they’ll cost when we get them, because they are environmentally friendly but the government is likely to withdraw the incentive. Maybe $350, could be more.”

Disclosure: I didn’t go to any shoe store. But otherwise, the story is true; it just applies to my recent experience visiting car dealers.

My first car was a 1958 Ford Fairlane. I went to the dealer in Claremont, looked at what they had in the lot, picked one out and that was it. It cost $2,000, which seemed like all the money in the world, which it probably was.

Over the next few decades, I owned various cars: another Ford, Plymouth and Chevrolet station wagons, a Mazda, a Saab or two and maybe some others that I don’t recall just now. Nothing too high-end, but I was raised to think cars are for transportation.

Then, a few cars back, I took to leasing, I think it was so that I wouldn’t get stuck too long with any particular car, and also to keep up with the latest safety devices every few years. Not only that, but I didn’t have to plunk down a king’s ransom. So, I moved up a notch and started driving a “luxury” car, very nice but I didn’t like that it took premium gasoline.

A few years ago, I dropped down a notch to a perfectly decent brand that runs on regular gas. But time’s up, the day of reckoning looms, time to re-up.

It’s not that simple. First, I’ve decided to go environmental, but there’s no such thing today as taking your pick of hybrids. Instead, the dealer gets a monthly allocation. And don’t be too picky about the color.

It gets worse. The brand I’ve been driving makes a hybrid, but they decided to eliminate spare tires. Instead, they provide some kind of inflation kit and a tube of glue – just pump up the tire and drive to the nearest tire store.

Not that many years ago, on a Sunday afternoon somewhere in Connecticut, we got a flat tire. By the time we were able to get safely off the interstate, it was practically down to the rim. That’s when a cellphone and a spare tire come in handy. Fortunately, we had both, and AAA came to the rescue.

There’s no such thing as an open tire store in Connecticut on a Sunday, or in Massachusetts, either. It turns out that you can drive from somewhere outside Stamford to Keene on a donut spare, just not too fast.

It may be that people don’t get flat tires very often these days, but they used to happen all the time, usually somewhere between Claremont and Newport. Maybe I just have a propensity for driving over nails on the highway, but I’d rather get a car of a different make and color than get stuck on some deserted road, with no cellphone coverage late at night, holding a can of glue.

I recently broke a shoelace and went to buy a new pair. They no longer make that kind of lace.

Joseph D. Steinfield lives in Keene and Jaffrey. He can be reached at joe@joesteinfield.com.

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