Musings
~ by Mark Blackwell
Self Reliance
“ If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.”— Napoleon Bonaparte
There’ s one of those Internet memes going around that says,“ I fought the lawn and the lawn won.” Well, that was my refrain the other day, except that in my case it was,“ I fought the lawn mower and the lawn mower dang near won.”
This near debacle started out of a sense of duty to the great deity of suburban landscaping, or at least my neighbors. The lawn was in dire need of mowing and it was up to me to mow it.
It was a beautiful morning, moderate temperature and low humidity, breaking a fairly long heat spell. A heat spell that I had been exploiting as an excuse not to mow the yard. But with that excuse evaporating with the morning dew, I sat drinking my morning coffee and plotting the day’ s landscaping offensive. Little did I suspect that fate was also making plans.
Face washed, coffee drunk, sunscreen applied, I marched out to the shed to fire up the old John Deere. I jumped in the seat and turned the key. With a mighty growl the engine caught. I put the tractor in reverse and as soon as I cleared the shed door I noticed that the right front tire was flat.
Well, I grew up in the country, in an age where if it was at all possible( and sometimes even when it wasn’ t) a man was expected to fix what ever needed fixin’( weather and relationships excepted).
It’ s just a simple flat tire, I thought. I could just inflate it and be on my way but on closer examination the tire wasn’ t a simple flat, it was seriously flat, I mean, bad, nasty flat. It was the kind of flat that is not content with close contact with the ground, but is actively trying to burrow down into it. I was going to have to jack the mower up.
After a diligent search of a couple of out buildings, I found my Grandpa’ s old Model T Ford car jack. I placed it under the axle and started cranking the handle and watched with no small amount of amazement as the wheel lifted off the ground.
I wasn’ t amazed that the wheel lifted, I was amazed that a simple tool fabricated in Detroit, Michigan, in the early 20th Century by men now gone, and left to me by another man now gone, was helping me do a job, here in the 21st Century.
36 Our Brown County Sept./ Oct. 2022