The cutting edge
I mowed my lawn for the second consecutive week.
Most years, that is no big deal.
This summer, it is.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with the job I have here. Mowing the lawn, working in the garden, chasing Mikayla on the walks . . . all of that is therapeutic to me.
There are far worse things than being out in the summer sun.
I hadn�t mown the lawn is successive weeks because the lawnmower was broken.
I may as well introduce him now: My evil twin, Mr. Fix-It.
He is actually no relation to me, except he occupies the same mass in the time/space continuum, has the same relatives, same family, lives in the same house, drives the same car, wears the same size clothes, eats and drinks what I do, is my age and looks a lot like me. Not many similarities at all.
He thinks he can fix anything. He learned a long time ago most fixes mainly require taking an old part off and replacing it with a new part.
He has worked on cars, water heaters, sink pipes, roofs and small toys for many years around our homes now and he always seems to leave them in worse shape than when he started. But, and you have to give him credit for consistency, he always thinks he can fix anything.
So it was when the riding lawmower decided to stop working. Actually, the riding lawnmower has no brain and therefore cannot decide anything. It simply was broken by some lithe teen-ager (a relative of Mr. Fix-it) who decided to try and mow through tree roots from a tree older than anyone now living in our hometown.
This time, she more than bent the blades.
She stripped out the blade holders. That meant taking apart the shafts which hold the blades and re-placing them.
Sounds like an easy task.
No task is easy for Mr. Fix-It. To begin, the shafts have a pulley on top. The belt which drives the pulleys which turns the shafts on which the new (straight) blades whirl is all attached. Al need to be removed in the proper order.
Aha. That requires a variety of sockets and wrenches and plenty of WD-40.
All that was in the garage. The knowledge to assemble the tools, disassemble the mower part sand reassemble them was not.
To get the pulleys off requires knowledge of how to stop a free-turning part form spinning when the wrench is applied. The solution Mr. Fix-It used was to grab ahold with a pipe wrench and hold the pulley. That tore up the pulley.
One did eventually come off. At this point, Mr. Fix-It had the opinion the WD-40 should have been applied to his knees. It would have accomplished more.
Still, one side of the tractor did get done
The other side would not come loose. As he lay there in the dust and dried grass, struggling with aching joints (no, WD-40 does not work; he tried) one of the many young men who seem to come around whenever the teen queen is home -- coincidence, I am sure -- volunteered to help.
As the weeks had gone by, the grass had grown.
It was now approaching the limit at which the ever-vigilant Grass Gestapo would report the true homeowner to the Grass Police. In our town, one foot is the limit. I know the Fabulous neighbor has a ruler and knows how to use it.
So he accepted help., The young man effortlessly removed the second pulley. Another young man (I tell you, they come in flocks) who is soon to be a Purdue graduate of engineering, engineered the cleanup of the mangled pulley, even painted it, and it looked fine.
Job done? Not when Mr. Fix-it is involved.
The aformentioned fan belt would not go back on. There was way too much play, The newly attached blades would not engage.
So, by luck or angelic intervention (I am a great believer in both), Grandpa Clarence stopped by to invite us over for dinner. He is not our grandfather, but he plays one for my daughters and does it quite well.
He also is a true handyman. I gave Mr. Fix-It the day off and asked Clarence to see if he could figure out the fan belt thing. He did in minutes.
We were off. Got half the lawn mowed. The fan belt snapped. Pause here for a dissertation on My Battle With Inatimate Objects. The hose that trips me at night. The car door which snags by pant leg. The tree branch which smacks me in the head.
Now the fan belt which breaks just to break.
So, with a crop circle resembling a visitor from another dimension smack in the middle of the front acreage, the teen queen was dispatched to the local parts store with the broken belt.
She came back with one. It fit.
And, as I mowed grass taller than knee level of Mikayla, not to mention deep enough to lose the wog, I slowly thrashed through the entire yard. Brown clumps of mown hay marked the territory.
This week, I mowed a second time and it worked. Two weeks in a row. I know all the folks coming home from church saw the goofy guy smiling and singing as he mowed the lawn.
It wasn�t so much the second cut as it was the knowledge Mr. Fix-It has been stifled yet again and won�t be heard from until it snows and the snowblower won�t start,
I have weeks of happiness between now and then.
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