I was looking forward to an extra two days off of work a few weeks ago.
The weather was expected to be warm and sultry, what you expect for summer.
My goal on the first day was to mow the entire lawn. That way I would have time the rest of the long weekend to maybe do some bike riding, hike in the woods behind the house down to Conneaut Creek with Casey, do some music sorting, watch a few movies I bought in recent months but hadn't had a chance to watch.
Well, a family matter kept me from doing all of the mowing on the first day, so it was time to rearrange my schedule. The first part of the second day was set aside to finish the mowing.
I pulled the tractor out of the garage, fueled with free gasoline from Get Go. When I put the machine in forward, it wouldn't move. The tractor has two sets of gears, one set for going slower, the other for going faster. I always leave it in the faster mode, but sometimes it pops out and remains in neutral. I set the gearshift to allow me to utilize the fast speeds again. It didn't budge. The lower speeds. No use.
So I pushed the thing into the lawn, my time schedule for leisure fast disappearing.
I was already sweating like a stuck Rush Limbaugh as I crawled as far as I could under the tractor and noticed the upper belt was off one of the pulleys.
Like most tractors, this isn't manufactured for easy access. I tried jacking the tractor up, but the jack had to be situated where I needed to crawl underneath.
With temperatures approaching the 90s, I looked under the tractor, tried to memorize the layout and repositioned the belt by reaching my hands up there and stretching, unable to see. By luck, it worked.
The tractor sprang forward and a mere hour later, I was back mowing. I could still get this all done and have part of the weekend for something fun. Except 10 minutes later it stopped moving. The belt was too stretched and frayed. I didn't have a belt nor a way to get it back on so my mowing for the day had come to and end.
I pushed the tractor across the yard. At a gradual incline it started to pick up speed so I jumped aboard. At least getting it back in the garage would be easy, I thought.
It was. Soon I was on our sloped driveway, picking up speed. As I passed the garage doorway I put my foot on the brake. It wouldn't give.
As a technician later explained, this belt not only handles the transmission, but the brake.
I grabbed a pole in the garage to try to break the momentum. It was like bailing out the Titanic with a bucket.
BOOM! I hit the brick wall at the back of the garage.
I was unhurt and when wife Louise found out, quizzed me on any structural damage to the garage, which is attached to the house. There was none.
That evening, as I gazed out on our unmowed lawn, Louise commented the water in the sink wasn't going down. Usually a few seconds with the garbage disposal on takes care of it. Instead, the sink on the other side filled with muck.
The plan was to simply wait for the water to go down slowly and then dump some drain cleaner in. As happened, hours later the water still sat there. So I bailed, much like one could have tried in vain on the Titanic.
But this time I got enough water out that the next morning the drains were cleared and Louise used the drain cleaner. It didn't help at all.
So here's a really bad theory but we executed it anyway: Why not run the dishwasher? The sheer force of all of that water propelled down the drain-cleaner drenched drain should clear it out.
No, we got thick, black gunk instead.
I decided to open the trap in the utility room below the kitchen. I thought sticking a hose into the pipe would maybe force out any gunk and free up the drain. This means standing on the clothes washer.
It also means getting sprayed full force with sewer water with little pieces of black gunk. Ugh!
It was a hot day but that didn't prove the way to cool off.
The next day with mower back in operation I finished the lawn. A little behind. Might have to postpone the hike in the woods.
But a snake cleaned out the pipes, the mower was fixed and I volunteered to help Louise clean the top part of the outside windows, facing out from the living room.
I sort of looked beyond the dirt and cobwebs when gazing outside, but she didn't.
I had cleaned the upper part of the windows before. Maybe in a past life. So I climbed the step ladder and found myself a foot or so short of getting the very top. Well, cleaning a window and leaving the top half is worse than not cleaning it at all. The alternative is to go to the back of the house, get on the deck, climb on the roof, walk across the roof, walk down the slope, lie on my belly, reach over and clean the window.
Or, use the step that is not a step on the stepladder, the step that could make you lose your balance.
Suddenly I realized that is what I must have done before. After all, I cleaned the window and I am still alive. So with Louise holding the ladder, I dramatically stood on that top rung, the one that isn't a step.
And I started to clean. And all was fine until I had to switch the paper towel and window cleaner to the other hands.
It isn't a step. It tends to make you lose your balance.
I lost my balance. Flailing. Sky. Boom again. I’m flat on my back five feet below. This time daughter Megan was holding beagle Casey so she could see me. Sad to say, Casey witnessed the whole thing.
This time Louise yelled at me for breaking her $20 flower container.
"Now the water will just flow out," she said as I tried to breath without hurting.
A few seconds later she said, “Well, the important thing is you are all right.”
I learned my lesson that time, for about one minute. Then I was back cleaning the rest of the window on the top step, leaving paper towel in one hand, cleaner in the other.
Besides slamming into a wall with the tractor, getting sprayed with sewer water and falling off a stepladder, I learned Michael Jackson had an even worse time. He died.
Now had I been at work that day, I would have been designing that front page, which also told of the death of Farrah Fawcett.
Being a Rolling Stones fan, I even had the perfect headline: 'State of shock.'
That was the title of a song Jackson did with Stones lead singer Mick Jagger in the 80s. Back then all musicians did stuff with Jackson. At least "State of Shock" was better than "Ebony and Ivory," which Jackson did with Paul McCarney. Ugh.
But I couldn't use my headline. No, these were my fun days off.
It also served as one of those life's lessons. Sometimes, just sometimes, it is better to go to work than to take a few days off.
If I had it all to do over again, eh, I probably would take the time off again.
Lebzelter is special sections editor. E-mail him at bobleb@starbeacon.com.
