No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Trying to be a Good Samaritan has gotten me in a pickle. We have two lawnmowers. However, the riding lawnmower is not working properly, and walk behind self propelled is one that my wife does not like. Both of these are gasoline powered. Since I am physically unable to do the lawn work, Judy has to do it. She saw my neighbor, working with a lightweight electric lawnmower and asked to borrow it to finish up the back yard. She, also, volunteered for me to sharpen the blade. That was the beginning of the end. The blade was beyond sharpening. It needed replacement. The nut holding the blade in place, was nearly rusted together with the shaft. I sprayed it liberally with penetrating oil, waited about 15 minutes, then tried to loosen the it again. Hooray, it came loose. There was a problem though. Once the nut was loose, it could not be removed because there was no way to hold the motor shaft still to remove it. Conversely, it could not be re tightened. There was no way to grip the motor shaft from underneath the mower. After fighting the problem for 2 1/2 hours, in the summer's heat, on Father's Day, I asked the mower owner to come take a look at it so I could show her what was going on. This lady is an architect and a do-it-yourselfer. I showed her the problem and said that I believed that the there was a way to correct the problem from the opposite end of the motor. However, because the shroud would only lift up about 4 inches, it was impossible to see the end of the motor shaft to determine whether or not there might be a hex key or other kind of fitting at the end of the shaft. She would have none of it. She was going to have Sears come out and take care of it. At that moment, my wife got angry,too. At me. For not having thought of this in advance. Now, I not only had my favorite neighbor angry with me, but I had my wife angry too. What a wonderful way to spend Father's Day!

Tied Together

For me, and lots of other folks, two events in June are inexorably connected: Flag Day and Fathers Day. I am reminded on both of my father who was a Marine who fought and was wounded on Iwo Jima during WWII. Although I was only five years old, I remember the image of the raising of the flag on Mt. Surabachi which was in the newspapers and the movie newsreels at the time. We, my mother, my little sister, Donna, and I, did not know my father's fate. When Donna and I knelt down to say our bedtime prayers, "God bless Daddy" was always part of them. The man who returned from the war would not be like the one who departed for it. The war changed him. He did not talk about it, and when he first got home, suffered with nightmares that woke us frequently. I knew he had been wounded, but it was not until I was much older that I realized the wounds were not just physical. He had been hit by mortar fire and lost part of his knee and suffered wounds in his shoulder and back. When he finally came home, he was still on crutches. He was then, and always will be my hero: John Wayne, Roy Rogers, Superman, and Buck Rogers rolled into one. He passed away five years ago, and I wish we had more time together. I never got to tell him enought times how much I loved him. The things I learned from him I will never forget. The most important one being how to be a man. I hope I learned well.