[For unfortunate reasons I’ve been stumbling around like a dazed moron. This is the story of me riding the wave of unawareness.]
A few days later I decided to fix the tractor. Honestly there’s not much to do. My 1944 and 1941 antiques I could bludgeon and swear until they ran, but a modern tractor is too complex. It’s more like a helicopter than a farm implement. Given all the EPA regulations and safety panels and hydraulic lines and fuel injection gadgetry and so forth I can barely operate it, much less service the beast. It’s a miracle the thing ever runs.
I hoped it was just a bad battery. It didn’t have no juice, but it had “just enough juice to make everything act weird” and that could be a battery. I hate vehicular electronics! If the battery was good I had no other ideas. I’d have to call to have it flatbed hauled to a service guy a million miles away! If that happened I’d be lucky to get it back by snowfall!! If you’re going to tell me all about how you get your tractor serviced by Fred who lives 1 mile away and only charges $20 an hour… don’t tell me. Just enjoy your unicorn powered life. I don’t have that and never will.
I pulled the air filter to get at the battery and pulled the battery and put it in my truck. It was time to drive to “the big town” and have the battery tested. Mrs. Curmudgeon came with me, probably reasoning I needed adult supervision, which I did. It was hot and I was feeling dragged out. I was craving a Slurpee like they had when I was a kid. Do they still make those?
I announced I would go sailing the next day regardless of whether the tractor ran or not. The season is fleeting and I’ve neither camped nor sailed!
Not only is the boat ignored, I haven’t even used the truck much. Elections have consequences and tripling the price of diesel matters. On the way I thought “I’ve been neglecting this truck. It’s steering a little weird.” It’s a Dodge and always prone to another bout of “death wobble”. I decided I’d better dump some money on the infernal beast before it implodes.
Sure enough, as we arrived at town Mrs. Curmudgeon said “your truck smells hot”.
“Can’t be,” I glanced at the gauges, “it’s in fine tune… or at least good enough.”
But we’d stopped in traffic and something was not right. I shifted down to increase RPM and thus blow more air. I wondered if my transmission was getting hot. My Dodge will tow a battleship and the engine runs cool but the transmission has never done well with high ambient temps and low speed. Pull a tank out of a field? It’ll do that fine. But if I idle in a hot Walmart parking lot to soak up AC it might melt! By the time I got to the parts store there was no denying something was seriously wrong.
I parked carefully, as if I might be there a few days. I said a little prayer before I shut it down. “Please start up again sometime.”
Smoke was drifting from the hood. I popped the hood and that wasn’t the source. I traced it to the driver’s side front brake. Clearly the caliper had locked. It was hot and smoking! How long had I driven it like that? No idea! I watched it a while in case it was going to catch on fire. (That has happened to me on a different vehicle!)
Then, all out of ideas, I grabbed my tractor battery and went into the store.
To my delight, the tractor’s issue really was a bad battery! I picked a new one and started a conversation with the parts counter person. I’m not going to use her real name because I want to respect her privacy, let’s call her Barb.
I asked Barb if it would be ok if my truck was in the parking lot for a while, possibly overnight. I explained that I had a seized up caliper.
Barb surprised me by marching out the parking lot to check on the situation… personally! She looked at the truck, chatted with Mrs. Curmudgeon, pounded a cigarette, and then… there’s no other way to say it.
Barb adopted me!
She recognized a man who needed help. She decided that I was going to get it. Barb is a fuckin hero!
More to follow…