James Trueblood held up a pair of black, queen-size pantyhose, standing in the sun outside his south Anchorage shop, JT Auto. I’d brought them in because I wanted to know if they could help protect my car from volcanic ash.
Mount Spurr is nearly 80 miles west of Anchorage, and volcanologists say it’s likely to erupt within weeks or months. That’s a problem for cars because volcanic ash is bad for their engines, windshields, and even paint jobs.
Trueblood told me I wasn’t the first person to ask him about pantyhose, but he hadn’t actually installed a pair yet. He said the idea is that the pantyhose work as a sort of pre-filter before the car’s air filter. If a lot of ash particles make it past the filter and into the engine, it can mess with the way the car runs and eventually damage the engine. That can happen while ash is falling, or later, when it gets kicked up on the roads…