I should have known when I sat down at the kitchen table one night last week to use our old typewriter on an application — just for a name and a few sentences on one of those pre-printed forms — that the whole thing was going to blow up in my face. We seem to be in the same rut right now that all homeowners face from time to time: Everything we own is falling apart. Anyway, I rolled the form into the typewriter and started on my name: M-i-c-h-a-e-l L-u-s-f-o-r-d … no “n”— the “n” wouldn’t work…
I either had to become “Mike Lusford,” and live in “Idiaa” or fill out the form in long-hand.
The curse actually began about four weeks ago when my son drove our old lawn tractor up the driveway after an afternoon of mowing, only to tell me that the creaking relic was running rough and had a problem.
“Let’s take a look,” I said in an uncharacteristically optimistic mood, considering the topic was both mechanical and potentially costly. I guess I should also mention that the mower is 23 years old. From experience, we both suspected carburetor issues. So we cleaned that up a bit, emptied the gas tank, blew out the fuel line, and spruced up the spark plug. A few minutes later, she fired up and ran as smooth as silk.
That’s when I made my big mistake. I washed up and promptly went inside to tell my wife that we had solved the dilemma. “We didn’t spend a penny, and it runs like new,” I said.
I felt good; I felt like a self-sufficient pioneer, a “Mr. Fix-It.” What an idiot…
Joanie promptly said, “That’s great, and I hope you’re as good with dryers; ours won’t heat up.”
Still reasonably upbeat, seeing that I was coming off a solid mechanical triumph, I said, “OK, I’ll look at it tomorrow.”
After a trip to the appliance parts counter the next day, I pulled the dryer out into the kitchen, dismantled it, cleaned every inch of its entrails, including the drum, belt and motor, replaced the large heating element that spirals around its back firewall, and reassembled it. By the time my wife got home from a trip into town, a load of damp towels was tumbling toward fluffy bliss.
“You did it!” Joanie proudly said. “Now, do you think you can do anything about the water heater? It just won’t give me enough hot water when I shower and wash a load of dishes.”
I suspected a bad heating element, and since I was already 2-for-2, I went for it, although not without mumbling a few serious questions about the real purpose of my existence. I thought that perhaps I should start having name tags sewn onto my shirts.
I can happily report that I did, in fact, replace the bottom heating element, a job that requires disconnecting the power, draining the tank, scraping a few tons of crud that resembles poorly cooked oatmeal out of the bottom of the heater, screwing a new element into place, and refilling the thing.
We now have enough hot water to put in a steam room, but, oh my, did my hot streak end after that repair.
In a succession of miserable failures, I then attempted to fix my chainsaw after it croaked while cutting down a dead pine tree; it went to the repair shop. My son’s weed trimmer came next. “It runs a little while then just dies,” he said. I tried to find the problem, but didn’t find the tiny pinpoint hole in a gas line; it went to the shop, too.
Within a week, knowing that my son’s truck needed tires, we had a new set installed at a local garage while he was at work. The bad news came when he went to pick it up. “They said it needs a new ball joint,” he told me. I used to work on my own cars years ago — have replaced starters and alternators, even brakes — but cars and trucks are, for the most part, a mystery to me now; I got out the checkbook.
It was at about that time that the television in our kitchen went on the blink; it’s just old enough to be past warranty, too. Televisions have never been my forte, but instead of a trip to the repairman, we’re just going to wait for its total collapse and replace it. We had to have our family room television worked on last year; it took six months and a lifetime of phone calls before a local electronics store finally got it fixed.
Within the week, a front tire on our car blew out, so we replaced the front pair of those since they were, according to the mechanic, supposedly defective anyway. We needed new brakes, too; why not get both done at the same time?
Late last week, I noticed our clothes washer was making an odd noise; “It’s been doing that a lot lately,” Joanie said. We both at the same time saw water leaking out of the bottom of it…
The washer had to be replaced. Apparently the brand we chose a scant four years ago was plagued by transmission issues. A salesman told us that some of that model hadn’t even made it a year before breaking down. Ours, as we were painfully aware, was well past warranty time, and its repair costs exceeded its initial price. To add insult to injury, we ripped our vinyl flooring as we tried to slide the new washer into place; we’ll have to fix that later.
If you think that’s not enough, we can discuss the rust repair on our family van. “Hmph,” the dealership repairman said. “This thing’s not that old.” By the way, we had the passenger side window motor replaced at the same time the rust was fixed; the window ceased to roll down last month as we drove through a fast food restaurant.
That nearly concludes my sad tale. The fact that the cord on our clothes iron has a short in it, that raccoons tore up my wife’s hummingbird feeders, even that our computer desk chair literally fell apart with me in it a few nights ago, is all just minor stuff. We just have to roll with the punches and accept the fact that if we’re going to own stuff, we’d better get used to repairing it. We’re on a losing streak right now, that’s all.
Things could be worse. I just got a letter in the mail that informed me that my truck needed to be taken to a dealership for a recall repair. It was just another hassle, but I came away grinning: I got to keep my checkbook in my back pocket that time.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an “n” to work on.
You can contact Mike Lunsford at hickory913@aol.com, or by regular mail c/o the Tribune-Star, P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. Visit Mike’s Web site at www.mikelunsford.com. He is currently working on his second book, due to be released in the fall.
Mike Lunsford
The Off Season: After a good run, ‘Mr. Fix-It’ hits the wall
- Mike Lunsford
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Books open our eyes to that which we will never see
I got a letter last week from a friend, Sister Margaret Quinlan, who lives amidst the beauty of the St. Mary-of-the-Woods campus. Besides the email space and the time she invests in describing the flowers and trees and birds that she shares with her roomies out there, as well as her accounts of teaching and traveling, Margaret most often writes about books. She loves them, and she knows I do, too.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Hoping to master the art of taking a nap
I got away from work as early as I could one day last week. It was a cloudy day, filled with grayness and rain, and my head felt as if I had inhaled my pillow the night before. My throat suggested I’d swallowed a wood rasp, too, and my eyes felt as though I was looking through someone else’s glasses. Yet, I had work do, this column being on the list of chores.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Windy companion finally gives him the cold shoulder
The wind came to visit us this week. We live on the knob of a hill that overlooks a Raccoon Creek valley, and it is a breezy spot year-round, but this wind was the kind that ushers in a full-blown front from Canada, perhaps just to remind us that cold weather is going to be the boss around here for a while. No matter how surprising our mild winter has been so far, this kind of wind tells us not to expect many more warm days over the next few months.
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SIDELINES: Good for even a traditional Classic buff
Lights down, tree out, another year gone at the Classic.
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THE OFF SEASON: The more things change, the more they keep changing
I must have had at least a dozen people ask at my son’s wedding a few weeks ago whether I cried, or “how I was handling losing him.” I think they all knew just how tight I am with my two kids, and thought I must have come completely unglued when it finally hit me that he was on his own for good, that the rules had changed nearly as much in my life when he said ,“I do,” as they did for him.
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Lunsford signing new book at Brazil Coffee Grounds
Parke County writer Mike Lunsford will be signing his latest book, “A Place Near Home” (Shade Tree Press; $15) from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at Coffee Grounds, Bakery and Coffee Shop in Brazil.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: In the neighborhood with the ‘fantastic’ Mr. Fox
As we drove home late one night last week, my wife and I, both a bit drowsy and anxious for a warm bed and a long nap, were surprised to see a red fox as it darted across the road. He made his appearance in a flash — just a bit of nose and fur and bushy tail — as he jumped out of a ditch in front of our car and was caught in the glare of our headlights on his way to the relative safety of an apple orchard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The lizard wore long johns, and other Halloween tales
We stocked our house with a supply of Halloween candy last week; Joanie and I stopped into the new dollar store in town and filled a grocery cart with Butterfingers and Baby Ruths and Three Musketeers bars. Every aromatic bit of it has been calling to me from the orange-and-black baskets we keep on a living room trunk ever since.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Here’s to the simple beauty of an untended garden…
I can hear a combine eating its way across a nearby cornfield as I write this on a Saturday evening. It is a sound that signals the end of one season and the beginning of anot
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The Off Season: Listening to Mozart is a ‘purr-fect’ way to relax
Regardless of what some people may believe, classical music fans are not snobs. They come from all walks of life, fall into all income brackets, and they’re not required to understand or analyze anything to which they’re listening; they just need to enjoy themselves.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Fall’s arrival heralded in ever-present fencerows
As much as I hate summer to leave us, I am happy that fall is just around the corner. It has been a bone-dry season, one in which I’ve watched my yard bake and crack like an old pie crust. My wife and I are still spending our evenings going about the business of watering flowers, standing with a dribbling hose in our hands, optimistically hoping that our drought will be broken because we’ve tempted the weather fates to do us one better and give us a good rain.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The value of hard work goes well beyond a paycheck
Years ago, I used to drive into Rosedale to get my workday started with a big cup of black coffee. Every morning, Monday through Friday, until the town grocery store’s business dried up and blew away, you could have found me slipping through a back door — left unlocked for the early birds — of the old Red and White, 15 minutes before it opened for official business.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Life’s little conveniences actually can be quite annoying
I am aware that much of the language I use is outdated, stodgy, old-fashioned; I apologize.
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The Off Season: Another sad passing: One-time trendsetter can’t keep up
I wandered into the local mall bookstore the other day. My wife and I had come to town with a list of chores to do and things to buy, but whenever we venture anywhere near a place with book shelves and sales tables and racks of paperbacks, we’re attracted to the scent of ink and the sight of book covers like bees to clover .
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Overheated in Hobart and other vacation tales…
My family climbed into our van and headed to Michigan a few weeks ago, just as we do every other year or so, to stay on the great lake there, for we have come to love its cool breezes and blue water and lighthouses.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Silence is wonderful, as long as you don’t take it too far
I have visited this topic — how it is often only through inconvenience that we come to appreciate the comforts we have in life — before.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: His tolerance for insects ends with sawyer beetles
As I sloshed a can of water over a pot of red petunias a Sunday morning ago, I saw a pine sawyer beetle make its way slowly up the vinyl siding near my front door. I swatted it to the concrete, and smashed it with my shoe … with impunity, I might add.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Storm damage makes you appreciate home
My wife and I hadn’t been into town for a good while when we drove in from our place to visit her doctor and my favorite hardware store last week.
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Paying respect in more way than one way…
It has become a habit of mine on Mother’s Day to go to Rosedale Cemetery and lay a few irises on my mom’s grave.
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The Off Season: On the trail with Max the Mushroom Cat
The wet weather and a busy calendar have kept my wife and me from doing what we’ve really wanted to do for a while. Ever since the thermometer began to stay consistently above 40 and the grass started to green, we’ve wanted to get outside, get some sun on our arms, and get down to the wetlands to watch the geese make their landings with a flourish and a honk.
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THE OFF SEASON: So much to do; so little time…
My wife’s aunt, Martha Jean McCarthy, passed away earlier this month; she was 85 years old. Martha Jean was kind and generous and busy her entire life.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A lesson plan for public schools
I am an advocate of public education; I pull no punches about that. I have taught in public schools for 32 years, and I think it is an inherently American institution.
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THE OFF SEASON: Craning to see elegance in flight
Just before midnight last night, spring officially slipped quietly into our back yards, but I doubt that any of us noticed it much this morning as we slurped our coffee or downed our eggs over this newspaper.
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The office boy who became a poet
I made up my mind when I moved my home office out of the house last summer that I’d organize some of my books, that I’d categorize and catalogue them in a way that would help me find the one I wanted when I wanted it. I can’t say it worked out as well as I had hoped. Already, I have the overflow stacked on the floor and shoved into the spaces where previous tenants once lived. Gradually, expediency is replacing order, so fiction and non-fiction, biographies and novels, are scandalously co-mingling on my shelves.
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THE OFF SEASON: The office boy who became a poet
I made up my mind when I moved my home office out of the house last summer that I’d organize some of my books, that I’d categorize and catalogue them in a way that would help me find the one I wanted when I wanted it. I can’t say it worked out as well as I had hoped.
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THE OFF SEASON: It’s taken long time to say thanks…
It was with a cup of coffee and a newspaper in my hands a few Mondays ago that I discovered that Mr. Hapenny had died.
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THE OFF SEASON: Lessons learned from the night the ice fell
The picture window of my cabin is sealed in a perfect glaze of ice as I write this, last Thursday morning, and since it faces due north and sees little direct sunlight, I imagine I will be looking through this shower door glass of mine for a few more days. But since I sit and watch the woods much of the time, instead of writing, I suppose the ice is serving a rare good purpose in keeping me on task.
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The Off Season: Pass a ‘midnight dreary’ with The Big Read
It was a pretty poor excuse for an evening one night last week as I lay beside our glowing fireplace, a pillow propped behind my head. I was spending some time with my current read, enjoying each page in the semi-darkness, smug in the knowledge that I’d not be heading to my classroom the next day.
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The Off Season: ‘Too old and too lazy’ to deal with coyotes
Despite the cold and the ever-present winter breezes that blow across our hill these days, I often find myself, even in the blue evenings, standing on the walk near my cabin, looking at the stars or watching for the last red-tailed hawks of the day as they float by in the drafts.
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The Off Season: The passion of having a passion is a great thing
It just occurred to me that I am fortunate to have a passion — a drive to do something that takes me away from the clutches of my job, of home repairs, of the mundane and the ho-hum.
- More Mike Lunsford Headlines
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Books open our eyes to that which we will never see
Nordic Festival Puts North Korea in Spotlight
Greece Passes New Austerity Deal Amid Rioting
'Rumor Has It' Adele's Rolling in the Grammys
Coroner: Houston Autopsy Results Weeks Away
Raw Video: Whitney Houston's Last Performance
Grohl, Grammy Nominees Cut Up on the Red Carpet
Raw Video: Greek Rioting Ahead of Austerity Vote
Raw Video: Child Rescued After Kosovo Avalanche
Reaction to Houston's Death at Clive Davis Party
Pop Music Superstar Whitney Houston Dies at 48
Fuel Removal Under Way on Capsized Italian Ship
Severe Cold Wreaks Havoc in China
Whitney Houston's Church Mourns Her Passing
79 Turtles Seized at Shanghai Airport
Police: Houston Found Dead in Her Hotel Room
Fans 'Speechless' Over Houston's Death
Today in History for Tuesday, February 12th
And the Winner for Best Super Bowl Ad Is...
Stocks Fall Sharply As Greek Deal Is Held Up
Arab League Wants U.N. Help in Syria
Sandusky Can See Grandkids, Have Local Jury
'Bachelor' Free Falls into the Ocean
Apple of their eye at $500 a share
Adele's revealing "60 Minutes" interview
Rosenthal: A's sign Cespedes
Bobby Brown on Houston's Death
Turkey's first face transplant
Exclusive Video: Bobbi Kristina Leaving Hospital
Obama Unveils $3.8 Trillion Budget
Kelly Ripa's Fashion Faux Pas
Lusetich: AT&T Recap
Raw Video: Aurora Borealis As Seen From Space
Grammys 2012: Highlights
2.12: Pebble Beach Pro-Am -- Phil Mickelson
2012 Grammys: Rihanna
2012 Grammys: Taylor Swift
Exclusive Video - Whitney's Bodybag
FUEL TV: Punk Payback Gym tips
