Sorry- I was going to scribble something profound and moving this morning, replete with emotive imagery and passion. There is plenty to talk about, after all, what with the collective bill of goods being peddled back up in the Emerald City, but the hell with it.
The road to the barn is paved with good intentions, right?
The project de jour yesterday was the resurrection of Small and Large Engines yesterday, or at least the intention thereto, and one thing just lead to another when the little Husky fired up its motor after spending the night on the front porch next to the Dwarf.
So, it was the afternoon before in the dimness of the barn. I had a bag of things acquired in town to accomplish the task. The Turf Tiger started fine, I had to move it to accommodate the JG’s Ford; the blue stinking oil-gas mixture almost made me nauseous, and the Ford itself, which was running, all in the center aisle of the barn, and the raw smell of the premium gas in the new container filled with care at the Martins Supermarket complex along with the trickle charger.
There is nothing the Nanny State can’t get at, BTW. The new gas containers have a fail-safe nozzle with an intricate twisting lock that is so secure that it will not permit gas to actually pour out. But that discovery was sort of in the middle of something else.
Once I had a Rube Goldberg lash up from the 12 volt batteries to outlets with the chargers somewhere in between, I ventured into the back of the packed garage to fish out the dust-covered 130mph Husqvarna blower. It is a nifty thing, purchased Up North when I arrived on one of the Raven and Bib Mama Support missions to find the lake-effect wind had built a mound of leaves in front of the garage nearly as tall as I am, and neatly bounded by the Venturi effect of the gale around the corners of the structure.
Damn. So, that day it was off to the Home Depot to bite the bullet and get the back-pack gas blower.
I am sure you understand. We have had it with electrically-powered lawn machines (and cars, for that matter, but that is a topic for some other day). I will never forget the hundred foot extension cord that was part of one of Raven’s periodic experiments in New Ways to Do Things Efficiently. It had no less than twenty splices from being run over with the blades of the electric lawn mower. I have no idea why I was not Speedy Electric with all that black tape holding the severed copper together.
And don’t get me started on tripped over that goddamned cord with the electric leaf blower.
Anyway, I dispensed with that mass of leaves in Michigan by stripping it systematically with the 130mph artificial wind, blowing them all over the bluff and down toward the Bay. Then I threw it in the back of one of the rented SUVs that I used to get back and forth, and eventually the machine made it to the farm to gather dust lo these last two years.
Being committed to small and large engines anyway, I decided to fire it up, which had meant purchasing the gas container that does not pass gas, actually, and then the stop at the gas pump to top off the Ford for the winter, and attempting to turn myself into the human torch monkeying with the gas can and the little filler hole to the gas tank, and then realizing I had no idea where the little rubber button was located to bleed the air out of the carburetor so it would start, which it wouldn’t, and then had to go on line to find a Husqvarna owner’s manual while the Turf Tiger belched blue smoke out of the barn, conveying the idea that perhaps I was going to succeed in burning down the structure, or myself if I dared light up a Lucky, and the whole thing was a nut-roll that culminated in pouring a drink and leaving the blower out on the porch.
Well, I got up from a witty email response to address the Great Concerns of the Day to see if the dew-covered machine I had left on the porch would magically start this morning, just in passing, since I had a bunch of caustic chemicals sitting in the downstairs toilet to try to remove that irritating rust-ring around the water level that comes from the high iron content of my well water.
I tried another couple switchology tricks on the blower while I wondered if there was a box that had rubber gloves in it because I didn’t want to put my hands in the thing, you know, and goddamned if the Husky didn’t fire up.
Well, never let a crisis go to waste, right?
So, I blew leaves until the gas tank ran dry and I am pleased as punch.
Anyway, I have to get organized and get out of here due to a foolish commitment elsewhere, but I will be back tomorrow. I think a tipping point is at hand- I can do the pastures and the lawn with the Tiger and the Husky; I need an industrial-grade weed eater, also a gas model, but that can be a project for the Spring, when the snows of winter have gone, and maybe we can get on that season of hope again, you know?
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303