All that for a bit of short grass
Sunny day, with sonny #3 outside to push the lawnmower for almost the last time this season. I wonder if he’s praying for an early winter. Head through door, for a breaker reset. Head through door, to say the machine won’t run. Dad outside, runs fine, back to inside. Head through door, to say the machine won’t run. Wait, we already covered that instance. Back outside, where the machine doesn’t run. This is not a good thing.
Eventually, after enough cordswapping and switch flicking had been done, the diagnosis was a broken wire in the machine’s cord. Electrical equivalent of a stroke. I am not going to leave the lawn with an interesting pattern of highs and lows, so out come the tools. Funny thing… there are always fewer screwdrivers than the last time. Maybe they’re slowly emigrating, like the boys from a small Irish village. Anyhow, with enough twisting and turning and cajoling, I remove a faulty wiring harness and set about replacing the broken section. That weathered pink colour (salmon) will not be available anywhere else, so yellow (think extension cord, now a touch shorter) will suffice.
Of course, the little spade connector is not something I keep in spare parts, so it’s time for a trip to Canny Tire. Like my toolbox, every time I go there, there are fewer “parts” and more stuff like pool toys and cooking pans and exotic lighting fixtures. The repair part business just isn’t what it used to be. A box of Marettes will have to substitute.
Oh, and a set of screwdrivers would be nice. If the others have “left home” then some new faces are coming back to the the master’s place. Workers for the cause. By now the afternoon is half-over, because I tend to enter some sort of odd time/space discontinuity in hardware stores. No matter, I now have more funny money than before.
To end the story well, the harness was replaced, and the lawn was completed before darkness covered the land. The lawn will probably get one more cutting before snow falls, since frost warnings are in effect and that’s a pretty good sign of seasonal demise. Everybody’s happy, and one more piece of the household tool population is repaired.
