vituperation

Thursday afternoon, I was in my workshop cutting a piece of soffit for the new shed when I heard the rumble of a truck outside. I shut off the table saw, took off my safety glasses (for the record, sawdust in the eye hurts like hell), and went outside.

The lawnmower man (heh) was in the driveway, turning his truck around. Forward and back, round and round he went, trying to dodge trees, drops, and the garage. Finally, he had the truck where he wanted it and shut it off. There was a big red mower on the back, but it didn’t look like mine. It was far too bright, shiny, and new-looking.

“How do?” he asked when he got the door open.

“Great, thanks. You sure this is my mower?” I grinned. “This mower looks too new to be mine.”

He returned the smile. “I reckoned it needed washing. Looked like you got out mowing in August.”

We’re in the middle of a massive drought here, and while we’ve gotten several inches of rain over the last month or so, August and September were nightmarish. Walking across the yard raised a haze of dust, and trying to mow — because God knows nothing as simple as a drought will stop the weeds — created a cloud reminiscent of Stephen King’s mist. When the lawnmower man picked up the mower, it was brown and dusty, and the area between the cutting deck and the bottom of the mower was stuffed tight with dried grass and leaves.

I nodded.

“Had to replace the deck belt,” he said.

I figured he would. Ever since I last changed the blades (thank you, rocks!), the deck belt had a tendency to slip off the pulleys every time I disengaged the drive. As much as I hate to link correlation with causation, I think I must’ve done something when I was changing the blades, but I can’t imagine what it was. It’s possible that hitting the big rocks and binding up the blade (to the point of smoking before I realized what was going on) stretched the belt, or cracked it, or something. I dunno, I’m no mechanic.

“Yes sir,” I replied.

“If this mower was a little older, I coulda saved you some money, but it’s so new it’s not in my book. Had to get the belt at Lowe’s.” He shifted and fixed me with a wait till you hear THIS shit look anyone who’s ever spent any time around a good ole boy would recognize. “Would you believe they charged forty two dollars for that thang?”

“I believe it,” I said. “Lowe’s is like my second home. I know all about some of their prices.”

He reached out, put hand on my shoulder, and leaned in like a conspirator. “But now I know how long the belt is, and if you ever need another one I can buy them for fourteen dollars. I can’t sell it to you for that, but it’d be more like twenty dollars’n forty-two.”

“That sounds like a right fair price to me.”

It amuses me that I worked so hard to lose the country talk in my teens, when I lived in the metropolis called Huntsville, and how easily I fall back into it when I’m in a situation like this.

“The belt up inside had come plumb off. I’ve never seen that before,” he said.

I may have neglected to tell him that I’d been taking pulleys off and whatnot when I was trying to fix it myself, before I realized that I had no idea where that belt went. Probably the belt being completely off had to do with that.

“Leave it to me,” I said, grinning again.

“I drove it all around, forwards and backwards, and threw the blade out with the engine wide open. Belt didn’t even slip once.”

We’d talked on the phone earlier in the week, on Tuesday (you made me fly!), and during that conversation he had posited that disengaging the deck while the engine was running full throttle might have been causing the belt to come off. Personally, I didn’t think that was the case, because it didn’t ever do it before the blade change, and started doing it immediately after. Immediately, as in “the very first time I disengaged the deck, and every time after.”

During that phone conversation, we had a small aside that tickled me.

Does your mower cut when you’ve got it in reverse? he’d asked.

No, if you try to put it in reverse with the blades engaged it shuts off. It’s a big pain.

I can fix that, he’d said.

“I fixed that reverse thing we talked about too,” he said. “Lookahere.”

He bent and pointed up under the center of the mower, at a dangling wire with some electrical tape around the end.

“That connects the [something] to the [something], and when you put it in reverse with the blades engages, it shorts out the engine. It’s just the one wire, and all I had to do was disconnect it. Put that tape around so it won’t short out if it touches anything.”

“Thankya,” I said. “My wife thanks you, too. We hated having to go through all that if we needed to back up.”

“Well, I figure you should be able to cut your whole yard without disengaging the blades if you want to. Ain’t never had no one complain about me fixin’ that.”

“I hear you.”

“Also went ahead and sharpened the blades, lubed it up, and topped off the oil. I don’t think she’ll give you any more trouble. Least not for a while, anyway.”

“Excellent,” I said. “What do I owe you?”

I was a little worried about the price. I expected it to be about $150, but didn’t expect for him to clean it, sharpen the blades, and do the other things. Add to that the fact that the belt cost a lot more than he expected, and I was preparing myself for a whammy.

“Seventy-five’ll do it.”

I very nearly shit on the driveway.

“Is a check okay?” I asked.

He nodded, and I went inside to get Robyn to write one. Mine tend to be illegible.

I paid him, thanked him again, then just before he got into his truck I tried my patented “try for a little more” Fred trick.

“Say, if I ever have a problem with my tractor, can you fix that, too?” I asked. “I’d like to be able to get it repaired locally if I need to, instead of trying to get it hauled all the way to the dealer in Hartselle.”

“Well, not really,” he said. “I have a couple of tractors I tinker around with, and a little bulldozer, but I wouldn’t want to try to work on them for money.”

“Okay. I just thought I’d ask.”

His eyes twinkled.

“I tell ya, you keep oil in that thing, and keep it lubed up, and it’ll outlast both of us,” he said. “Those diesel engines were built to last a lifetime. But, if it ever breaks down on you, give me a call. I guarantee I can find someone around here who can work on it, and they won’t charge a hunnert-thirty-five an hour like the shops do.”

Have I mentioned recently just how much I love living out of the city?

My project plate is getting piled up. Robyn’s asked me to make her a table for Christmas; I have to build a bigger coop that’s capable of holding the new chickens we’re getting next year, as well as our current chickens; I have to fence in a new bigger area for that new bigger coop.

Then it’s time for the biggest project of all: fencing in the back forty with electric fence, sectioning off a part for the pigs, sowing some seed suitable for grazing, and building a small barn for the cows or goats. There’s some disagreement between Robyn and I over what’s going to go in the back forty. I’m agreeable to getting a cow or two, but I really want a few goats, because they’re so cool. Next to the lynx, they’re about my favorite thing at the local petting zoo, and I understand they’re even more entertaining than chickens. Plus, they’re very awww-inspiring.

It should be a busy winter and spring.

Hopefully you’ll find this video as enchanting as I do.