The Mower

For the Friday Challenge

The Sears parts website used to be a treasure trove of information for the domestic tinkerer. Due to its aid, I have fixed a dryer by changing a fuse, accumulated a healthy supply of toothed couplings for my blender (although I've since received a "Magic Bullet" for smoothy-making), and replaced the rack roll kit on the upper drawer of my dishwasher (and then used a rubber band to keep the stopper in place after I broke that).

But the most ambitious and self-satisfying endeavor I have committed to was the repair of a Craftsman 6.75 hp lawn mower.

When we moved to Alabama, we had a little dinky lawn mower and a quater-acre yard filled with #1, Grade-A Alabama weeds. They grew a foot a day and I spent two summers mowing twice a week before I went out after a heavy rainstorm and hand-weeded the blasted place. The mower died everytime the grass was taller than six inches, and I longed for something more. Something that wouldn't jam and cut out when forced to mow a wet lawn. Something with a self-propellor that actually worked. So we ditched ours and I used our neighbor's until we got orders to Hawaii.

Our first house in Hawaii was a beautiful little 1100-sq-footer with rent of $2100/month. The lawn was zoysia--and if you know anything about zoysia you know it's extremely hardy and grows extremely slowly. In addition, the owners hired a yard service.

Ten months later we moved to a four-plex on base with St. Augustine or centipede or some other tropic grass that gave me hives whenever I touched it. I went down to the Hickam BX and checked out their meager selection.

Amidst the Snappers and Briggs & Strattons was an anomaly. A Craftsman, 6.75 hp with no corresponding tag on the shelf and no owner's manual. But the price was good and I couldn't get over the horse power. I could mow a sugar cane field with this baby! So I took it home.

Loaded it with gas and oil and mowed the lawn. Then it leaked all over the shed floor.

I set it out on the walk way that went to the parking area and knocked on my neighbor's back door. "My lawnmower's leaking and I don't know if the gas and the oil will catch the dried grass on fire. I've left our kitchen fire extinguisher next to it. I'm going to get some kitty litter."

In addition, I went back to the BX. Yes, they'd take it back. But, man, it was such a good price. Surely it wouldn't hurt to take a look, right?

Sears parts catalog to the rescue. Using their exploded parts diagram, I was able to take the motor apart and find the oil pan was cracked. I think they called it an "oil pan." What it really was, was the entire cast iron bottom of the engine assembly. Cracked right through.

So I did what any reasonable military wife with no job and a pre-schooler would do. I ordered a new one. Of course, the Sears parts store on the island didn't carry them. And shipping was atrocious. But what can you do? It arrived, all bright and shiny and unpainted a while later.

What didn't arrive was the felt seal between the two pieces. And of course it was attached to the old pan and not the upper assembly and refused to come off save in many small pieces. Fortunately, my best friend's husband is a gear head. He had some gasket felt that he willingly gave me having long-ago figured it's far easier to just buy a new gasket than cut it to order. He did give me the great advice to put oil on the raw edge of the pan and press it down on the felt, thereby creating a pattern to cut.

I don't remember how many times I had to go back in and fiddle around to get all the pieces where they were supposed to be. Or how many bags of kitty litter I went through. But, somehow, by the grace of God, it worked. The mower's sitting in our shed now, five years later, waiting for our Kentucky blue grass-mix to grow just a little higher.

And the blessed thing will cut through anything and not stall.

Car Trouble

It’s not that the Sentra wasn’t up to the task. Less than a year before, it had successfully transported its mistress from Charleston, SC, to Great Falls, MT.

In January.

The only hiccup being the day they’d reached South Dakota and the locks froze. A trucker rescued Chris from her compact prison, and she’d taken away a firm understanding of the number one rule about driving in winter in the north, that being: don’t lock your car.

My aunt and uncle lived on a farm outside of Spokane. I’d gone to high school in town where I’d spent five years mocking rural-dwellers from the Inland Empire who drove to Spokane to shop. But my uncle, a high ranking GS in the BLM during the week, was a mule-breeder on the weekends, and Chris had never seen a donkey farm. We were also in desperate need of good cooking.

I don’t recall, now, why we decided to go south through Helena, instead of north down HWY 200 through Lincoln (home of the Unibomber at the time). Nor why we chose to take her car, other than for gas mileage purposes. But we did.

It was a beautiful Friday afternoon and Great Falls was ten miles in the rear view mirror when the check engine light came on, and an ominous rattling made its way through the classic rock station. We weren’t stupid. As much as we wanted to be on our way, we knew there was a chance something was terribly wrong. Maybe. So we limped to the next spot on the map—Cascade.

It was an American small town, and I don’t suppose you need any more explanation than that. It would have been as at home in Iowa or Central Oregon. Small, steep-roofed houses, grain elevators along the railroad tracks, a single main drag.

And no one at the single auto garage.

We debated continuing on, but soon found a tire store manned by three ancient men. I doubt more than one of them actually worked there. They looked exactly as you think; worn jeans, worn hats, worn faces—retired farmers.

Turned out the one mechanic in town was away at his son’s baseball game. He would be by in a while. In the meantime, they glanced sideways at the little yellow car and made remarks about how we’d let the oil run out.

“No,” Chris said. “It’s not the oil light. It’s the check engine light.”

Couldn’t be. What was an “engine light”? It was the oil light. Add some oil and you’ll be fine.

“I have two different lights,” Chris said, Southern respect fighting with her natural aversion to idiots. “It’s the check engine light. The engine started making a noise, like chattering. Then the light came on.”

The oldest, most weathered of our hosts spat onto the cracked asphalt. “It’s a Jap car. It’s just speakin’ Jap.”

Of all the liberal, hippie, free-lovers I’ve known in the great state of Oregon, it has been my experience that there are no more fiery, explosive defenders of minorities against unthinking bigots than a few select white Southern women. One being the Creature’s God-mother who, upon hearing a campsite of idiots singing the John Denver classic, “Thank God I’m a White Boy”—in earshot of Her Thai God-Baby—paced about our tents, searching the ground, and mumbling, “Gimme a good stick. I gotta whoop me some white boys.”

Chris is another of these fearless defenders. Her normally pink complexion glowed red as hot coals. Her fists clenched. Her teeth ground.

The man repeated his diagnosis in irregular intervals. I stared down the road, wondering if the men were WWII vets and searching in vain for a mechanic-looking truck to save us. Chris gave one more growl and retreated to the car to knead the steering wheel into submission.

We were there an hour. I can’t remember if the mechanic finally arrived to declare his own ignorance of foreign cars, or if we just decided we couldn’t wait any longer. But, at last, we loaded back up and hobbled the reviled car back to Great Falls.

Half an hour later, we were settled in my rig, a ’91 F-150.

We figured we could break down anywhere within a five-hundred mile radius and find help within five minutes.

Lessons learned? Don’t break down in rural Montana in an import.

And Chris doesn’t really like donkeys.