Adaptive Curmudgeon

I’ve been accused of stringing cliffhangers together because I’m an asshole by accident.  So I thought I’d throw in a short post to tell you what caused Dipstick’s uh…downfall and maybe wrap up a few loose ends.  Those of you with mechanical aptitude already guessed it long ago.  Dipstick’s problem was…stupidity!

Oh wasn’t that specific enough?  Well, the other problem is that he’d inadvertently screwed up while torquing the nut holding the battery’s solenoid wire.  This is the wire that goes from the battery (positive or negative depending on your tractor’s religion) to the starter switch solenoid.  (I may be using the wrong nomenclature but you get the idea.)

He twisted the cable too far and bent it until it touched the wiring harness on the other side and shorted across the solenoid.  This powered the starter on a 100% cycle.  The starter, since it was going nowhere, became an expensive source of smoke.  It is possible that some smoke came out of my ears too.

I figured out all of this about ten minutes after Dipstick hightailed it down my driveway with buckshot in his ass as the chickadees chirped peacefully.  Then I rolled the tractor back in the garage and drove away.

The starter was (as expected) junked.  Rather than fret over the Indian made “new” starter I chose to rebuild the original “made by Ford and strong like a rock” starter.  I was going to do it myself but instead I took it to a guy who rebuilds starters.  By chance (well not entirely by chance…it’s a sparsely populated place where I live) he knew Dipstick.  He had already heard Dipstick’s rendition of the story and chuckled while asking my version.

All of us have a Dipstick somewhere in our life (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re someone’s Dipstick).  The starter mechanic thought my story made more sense than the “it just smoked for no reason” he’d already heard.  He sort of shook his head as if he’d heard of Dipstick doing various shenanigans that made my starter seem mild.  I didn’t want to know.  He said the starter would be done in a week.

As for the battery, it was unharmed.  Cool.

A week later the starter was fixed as good as new.  I like it more than the tin-pot Indian one I’d paid so much to buy.  The price was fair too.  Driving it (the starter) home I came to an epiphany.  That rebuilt starter had been done correctly, competently, in a timely manner, and with a smile.  It was the very first time since I tore the tractor down two years ago that I’d dealt with someone who’d worked on a tractor part who hadn’t either screwed up the tractor or hosed me over.

It is possible that I had this coming.  It is possible that we all live many lives.  It is possible that in my last life I was really really bad.  Possibly a cackling maniac who carjacked nuns, stole candy from babies, and invested stranger’s money in Enron stock.  This could be the reason why every machinist, mechanic, or Dipstick who’d gone near the tractor had done worse than wrong but practically sabotaged it.

In theory this shouldn’t have been such a big deal.  I did my homework before I started.  An N-series Ford is supposedly a pretty simple engine and you can buy all the parts you need.  I had earnestly tried my best.  I may be inexperienced but I’d been methodical and careful and followed the manual.  Surely I’m not a complete imbecile.  I’d been completely mystified by a crankshaft that had been machined incorrectly but everything I’d removed and re-installed was in the right place with the right torque and the right manner.

I was just too naive and trusted that the machinist would have done it right.  A beginner has to start somewhere.  But for once someone had done right.  The starter was actually fixed.  With that one thing done right…maybe my luck would change.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that after a machinist turns your drive train into a Rubik’s cube and an idiot burns the only burnable components…maybe the only way to go is up.

On the other hand I was thoroughly done with tractor tinkering.  I’d meant to cross “rebuild an engine” from my bucket list but this just wasn’t the time.  I needed to get this damn machine back on it’s feet.  Little did I know I’d make great progress a few weeks later.

(For those of you accusing me of leaving a cliffhanger I’ll give you a hint…it was running well before Christmas.  I promise.)

A.C.

P.S.  I should clarify, the tractor is running.  It is positive ground 6 volt like I wanted and the way it was made.  But it is not perfect.  It’s running and working but it is nothing like totally restored.  It might be fine and run for years or maybe it’s not fine and I’ll be going through it all over again in a season.  I simply don’t have the confidence to know that.  (Smoking starters and mis-machined crankshafts are excellent at building humility.)  I suspect plowing season this spring (with my new plow!) will be the time I find out.

“We gotta’ get the tractor out of the garage!”  He stammered.

Bullshit!  I wasn’t worried about the garage.  I was thinking about where to bury the body.

“Oh shit man! Do you have a fire extinguisher?”

Of course I have a fire extinguisher.  But you don’t just treat the symptom.  I was going to fix the cause of this fire.  The ignorant fool in front of me must be…

“An extinguisher!”  He interrupted my thoughts.

Can you imagine the mess this fool would create with an extinguisher?  Starters are electrical components.  The “fire” was overheated components and not actual flames.

“I’m not letting you play with a fire extinguisher in my garage.”  I growled.

I prioritized.  First I would stop the fire.  Then I would beat this ignorant shithead into pulp.

I quickly and calmly scooped up a vice grip, wrapped it in a shop towel to protect me from the hot metal, and clamped it to the very hot battery ground cable.  The insulation on my new $9 cable was melting.  My new battery was giving off heat and it was venting some sort of vapor.

It would be easy to get a nasty burn.  I was unconcerned.  Dipstick touched something hot and yelped.  Then he took a whiff of whatever was coming out of the battery and made a gagging sound.  I hoped it hurt.

I eased the grounding cable free.  The current ceased.  The immediate problem was solved.  A starter doesn’t have flammable liquids (like oil or gas) so it wouldn’t burn more.  Whatever damage would happen was already a done deal.

I flexed the vice grip and looked back at Dipstick.  What shall I use the clamp for now?

Dipstick, nursing his singed finger, looked more scared of me than the smoldering tractor.  Which was a correct deduction.  Possibly the smartest thing he’d done in his life was to distract me.  “Let’s roll it out of the garage.”

I set down the vice grip and we rolled the tractor out of the garage.  Outside the sun was shining and my beloved chickadees were calling.  The smoke was already dissipating.  God wants us to forgive.  I like chickadees.

Dipstick continued, “I totally didn’t do that.”

Oh dammit!  What a stupid, ignorant, unnecessary statement.  Did this guy want to be beaten?

“After two years in my garage it spontaneously combusted?  Today?  Your presence is a coincidence?  This moment, of all possible moments, right now is when the moon and stars aligned to create the fire of Prometheus in my brand new starter?  Is that what you’re telling me?  I fucking disagree!”  I was speaking slowly and not shouting but Dipstick knew what was going on in my head.  He’d gone from scared to flat out terrified.  I think the mention of Prometheus, a word which surely had no meaning to him, really sent him over the top.

I wasn’t done.

“You.  Set.  My.  Tractor.  On.  Fire!”

I leaned over the hood, which was still hot, shoved my face through the cloud of foul smelling smoke toward Dipstick who was cowering on the other side of the tractor.

Now I really was shouting.

“No matter how stupid I may be.  Even if I couldn’t get the bearings right.  Even I’m a lousy mechanic.  Even if everything I got machined came back messed up.  Even if it takes me the rest of my life to rebuild this stupid little flathead engine…  I never set anything on fire!”

“It’s out now.” He offered.  His eyes were twitching.  I’m neither young nor lithe but I’m not to be trifled with.  This was my tractor.  Not somebody else’s tractor.  He’d burned it.

Actually I was angry at myself too.  He was a world class idiot and I’d known it.  In my desperation I’d let him infect my garage with his stupidity.  This is my garage.  My tractor.  I wanted to send this cockroach home to whatever hovel from whence he came in a manner so thoroughly complete that he stayed on his couch smoking cigarettes and watching Oprah and whimpering in pain until the end of time!

Dipstick sidled toward his truck.  Yes, good move.

“Go.”  I growled.  I haven’t been so angry in years… decades.

“My buddy can fix that starter.  Maybe the battery is under warranty.  Call me when you get the parts.  It’s just a distributor…”

“Fire!  You…”  I began but I stopped.  I listened to the chickadees.  Time to seek perspective.  My tractor is so old that it can take serious abuse.  It didn’t work when we started and now it didn’t work with some smoked components.  A couple hundred for a starter and battery and I’m back where I started.  It’s not like the block was cracked.  It wasn’t worth going totally unhinged.

“I have an appointment.”  I said.

“Uh.”  He shuffled his feet.

Did this idiot expect to get paid?  An hour’s labor and $200 in smoked components?  Who causes that much carnage per hour?  Well maybe he really did need a beating!

“Look I’ll just go.”

He must have read my face.  Yes, get off my property.

“I don’t want you to be late for your uh…”

“Karate class.”  I spoke evenly.  “I need to work out some stress.  Immediately.”  I was thinking alternatively of chickadees and beating him senseless.

Poor Dipstick.  I’d have been willing to tolerate anything if he could actually fix the tractor.  If he’d been a drunk, stupid, illiterate, scumbag who fixed the tractor I’d have given him a handsome tip.  He could have been meaner than Stalin but if the engine ran…fine.  I’d let him drop cigarette ashes on the floor and I gave him a beer.  But the one and only thing he had to do… he’d done worse than I could have possibly imagined.

He got in his truck and drove away.  I never saw him again.

So long as a beer was in one hand and a cigarette in the other, Dipstick seemed confident.  For about an hour he orbited the tractor while I offered wrenches or turned the hand crank.  (It has a “backup” hand crank…manual override!)  He shoved the test light into random orifices (thankfully in the tractor).  This made sense; the wiring harness is very simple but it’s still essential to its operation.

Finally he announced that the distributor cap was toast.  Something I’d been pondering myself.  I agreed to order a new distributor cap (fairly cheap).  We’d reconvene when the part arrived.  I explained that I had an appointment soon so we might as well wrap up for the day.

He insisted that the entire front end would have to come off for the repair.  To replace the cap?  I’d serviced it before (back in the happy days when it ran) without going to such extremes.  Dipstick really wanted to pull that front axle.  No.  Pulling an axle to get to the distributor cap is nuts.

Dipstick was pleased with himself.  Giving him a can of beer was like hitting a dying man with a defibrillator.  He promised the tractor would be running soon.

I had my doubts.  Even if the distributor was toast the tractor should have done something.  The starter just wasn’t cranking like it should.  Also Dipstick kept trying to talk me into retrofitting my tractor to 12 volts and I opposed this procedure.  (There are legitimate reasons to retrofit old tractors from their original 6v components but “it don’t work” isn’t one of them.)

I was getting mixed signals.  I couldn’t fix the tractor so I doubted myself.  On the other hand Dipstick seemed to be missing finer points of logic.  Perhaps we were both morons?

Meanwhile Dipstick was aimlessly tightening some wiring connections.  I ignored him while I turned over his diagnosis in my head.  Something didn’t seem right.  I was annoyed with his fussing over the connections.  Nothing wrong with tightening the connections but it seemed irrelevant until the main situation was handled.

Then I noticed something.  His cigarette was smelling weird.  No, not like he was a pothead…that wouldn’t bother me.  Instead it smelled like…  Oh shit!

I strode past him to the opposite side of the tractor.  My starter was smoking!  In the short time I glanced at it the volume of acrid smoke increased alarmingly.  Then…and you know how this happens in moments of stress…time slowed down and everything came into very clear focus.

I had a hard time getting my mind around this totally unacceptable piece of information.  For all my many faults, for all my mechanical missteps, no matter how poorly I’d performed rebuilding this tractor…I had never set anything on fire.  How low could the bar get?

Dipstick noticed it too and blurted out “I didn’t do it.”

I was flabbergasted!  The question of guilt wasn’t on my mind.  He was the obvious cause but more importantly…

My. Tractor. Was. On. Fire.

Something deep in my black dangerous heart came to the surface and when I looked at Dipstick the color ran out of his face.

“Dude, you were here.  I didn’t touch nothing.”

He took a step back.

Smoke was pouring out of the starter.  My tractor was on fire.  Inconceivable!

This son of a bitch was gonna’ die!

Dipstick realized he was standing closer to a human supernova of rage than he’d ever been in his life.  He dropped his cigarette.

My huge dog started barking and leaping mightily at her chain.  She was well away from the action but knew something terrible was happening.  Dipstick eyed the angry dog nervously.  Then he looked at me.

“The dog is the least of your worries.”  I was clenching my teeth.

After a few calls I’d arranged for the fellow to come look at my tractor.  I’ve since forgotten his name.  Probably because of the trauma.  For now I’ll call him Dipstick.

When I asked Dipstick if he could fix a tractor of my make and model he paused and then said “sure”.  It sounded like he’d say the same thing if I’d asked him if he could do differential equations or speak Latin.  I was desperate so I accepted it at face value.  Also, my tractor (despite ruining my self-esteem) is probably one of the easiest to manage engines around.  Many of the farmboys in the area could fix it better than me.  Maybe I’d found one willing to work!

I adjusted my schedule to meet Dipstick and blocked out several hours to “assist”.  I had a wad of cash in my pocket and was prepared to meet his hourly rate.  I had a $100 bill stashed and if he did good he was going to get a hell of a tip!  I was looking forward to a fun afternoon.  Hopefully, I’d hand him wrenches and shit and maybe I’d learn what he was doing so I’d know it myself next time.  For once the pressure was not on me.

We met (at a bar of course) on a sunny afternoon.  He was late.  He arrived in a beat up truck blaring Lynyrd Skynrd.  He was wearing a flannel shit (Note: this was a typo but I found it appropriate and left it) and carrying an empty can of Coke he was using as a spit cup.  Someone, and I’m not ruling out a malignant God, had ordered up “clueless yokel” from central casting and placed him before me.  He exuded an aura of stupid.  My first impulse was to kick him in the groin.

But I reminded myself that I was looking for a man to fix an old rustbucket tractor.  If he’d arrived in a Porsche with a business suit then he’d be the wrong man for the job.

At my farm he apologized for being late.  Apparently his “good truck” wasn’t working and then he’d rescued some pal from the side of the road in another dead truck.  It had been a busy redneck day for him.  The number of dead trucks in his story confused me but I’m used to it.  Rednecks swap trucks like swingers with wives.  So long as you get there who cares what name is on the title right?  As with all redneck truck stories he was the hero.  I looked over at my truck; also dead.  I sighed.  Then, with a glimmer of hope, I thought “if he fixes the tractor I’ll turn him loose on my truck…why not?”  Hope is a powerful thing.

Demographic prognostication is a hobby of mine.  I sized up Dipstick and in ten seconds could probably write his life story; on a napkin.  I presumed was a divorced, unemployed, loser with a drinking problem.  None of which worried me.  Nor did it disqualify him as a “tractor fixer”.  I had tried (mightily) and failed (repeatedly) to fix this tractor; therefore the empirical evidence suggested that I was the least qualified guy on earth.  What I really needed was a redneck who was handy with a wrench.  And, I rationalized, the fact that he got here at all means he (probably) had a driver’s license…a good sign.  (Some of you might be surprised to know that the war on “some” drugs has left a goodly portion of the young male redneck portion without legal licenses after one or more drunk driving “events”.  There are times when I’ve been the only man in the room who has a license, is not under the gun from a string of “exes”, and is not on probation.  Yes, flyover country is that glamorous.)

I opened my garage.  He liked the tractor.  This pleased me.  I explained the mechanical history:  Every part of the engine had been replaced or re-machined.  But it had been too tight.  I cracked the tractor open again and discovered the crankshaft had been improperly machined.  I’d re-installed the re-machined, machined crankshaft and re-assembled everything.  It still wasn’t as smooth as I’d like but I could hand crank it.  This was worrisome but not the biggest issue at the moment.  There was no sign of spark.  Either the fuel wasn’t there (which I doubted) or I’d screwed up the wiring (which was my guess).  Even if the engine wasn’t as smooth as I’d like it should be doing something.

He looked at it and said, “Your ground is on backwards.”

“Uh,” I stammered, “it’s a positive ground tractor.”

“No such thing.”  He replied.

I reminded myself that if I’d known what I was doing it would be running.  I deferred.  “Well it left the factory with positive ground and ran that way before the engine conked a couple years ago.  But I could be wrong.  You do what you want.”

He busied himself crawling around the tractor.  He looked fidgety….like a junkie.  Finally he said “I need a smoke break”.  I am the last 0.001% of the non-smoking population that treats smokers like human beings.  We were in a garage.  “Light up.”  I said.  He was delighted.  Soon he had a smoke and seemed to settle down.  (Thankfully he’d set his spit cup in his truck.)

I am pretty sure this kind of tractor is so crude that it doesn’t care which way the ground goes (it’s not like it has integrated circuit boards!)…but he consulted the manual (yes, I have a manual) and clambered around with a test light.  He looked worried.  Fidgety again.  Like a squirrel trying to focus on Opera.

“Would you like a beer?” I asked.

His smile was all encompassing.  I’d guessed correctly.  Dipstick here couldn’t keep his shit together without a beer.  Fine.  I grabbed a Miller for myself and gave him one.  (No, I’m not giving good beer to this guy and he’d probably die if I tried.) With a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other he was a whole new man.

He started striding around the tractor and looking positively intelligent.  I was pleased.  There was light at the end of the tunnel.

After my fiasco trying to pull start an inert lump of metal cleverly disguised as a tractor I came to several important conclusions.

#1:  I just wasn’t smart enough to figure out what was hosed and un-hose it. Someone else, presumably someone cooler than me, would have to do it. I’d known this for a long time but I’d been pussy footing around the truth. My only hope was that I could watch and learn to do better next time.

#2:  The tractor may have been purchased as something like a fun toy but it had become important.  Wood needs to be hauled, snow must be plowed, chicken shit must be shuffled, and the yard…my God the yard was giving me fits.  I don’t mind looking “low class” but I resent looking “crackhouse”.  Nobody should work as hard as I do to have a house that looks like it’s abandoned!  In lieu of a tractor I’d been limping along with ingenuity and denial. It wasn’t enough.  Time to shit or get off the pot.  Fix it or buy something new but get it done now!

#3: Paying someone to fix it, which had heretofore been impossible was once again my best option.  This is exactly where I’d been a couple years ago when the little Ford conked.

Problem #3 was the most maddening.  I was in possession of a broken machine which nobody would fix on my behalf (for pay!).  I’d turned the world upside down and there wasn’t a man (or woman!?!) within a hundred miles that would take money to fix an old tractor.  What’s worse is that the only truck I owned that was large enough to tow the tractor a longer distance (to civilization) was also dead.  Catch 22.

[There is a time and a reason to bitch about things.  The time is now and the reason has to do with my endless searches for a mechanic.  Here goes!]

Our modern self-imposed labor shortage pisses me off.  When some bobblehead on TV tells you the unemployment rate is such and such…it doesn’t mean shit. The reason I know this is that I cannot pay money to get services. No matter how much money I offer.

I get constantly hounded by friends and relatives who do not believe this.  (You know who you are!) But I’m not making it up.  I can wave a big wad of actual real American money in the air and I cannot necessarily hire a job done.

I would understand a little difficulty finding hired help.  I live in the hinterlands so there aren’t many people to start with.  Skilled folks (like mechanics) are rare.  Skilled folks (no matter what hippies and politicians will say) are always in great demand and usually busy people.  You’d expect it to be hard to hire the tractor repaired; but not impossible.  But it is a symptom of a greater uh… vacuum?

Nor is it entirely all about limited skills.  What I’ve found out is that for even the simplest job you cannot pay to have it done, because the jobs I need done are work.

Back in the old days folks did work because they wanted cash.  People payed cash because they wanted stuff done.  There was invariably someone who would do the job if you paid enough.  That is the very definition of a functioning market.

Not so much any more.  You can offer a thousand bucks, a date with a model, and a chocolate birthday cake and that isn’t enough.  You won’t get someone to come to my house to run a fencepost or shovel shit for nearly any amount.  It’s not that a fencepost is impossibly complex.  It’s that doing work for cash is a quaintly outdated idea from former times.  Certainly very few people are willing to go to much (any) effort to chase a dollar.  (I’m not alone in this complaint.  There are unfilled jobs in oilfields in North Dakota and Saskatchewan and multi-generational 25% unemployment in certain neighborhoods.  These two facts should be self-solving.  However, no amount of money offered in an oilfield will alter pockets of “deliberate” unemployment.)

The reason is maddening.  There is a significant (huge) portion of the spectrum that could work.  Many of them have skills (like fixing tractors).  They also have other (apparently better) options; among them unemployment and welfare (and often retirement savings). This is a Curmudgeonly Gem Of Insight so pay attention:

The labor market for low end work (and skilled work like fixing a tractor) has been pounded to death by free money.  It’s nearly over.  There are now jobs that you cannot get done for any amount of money.  Anything anyone says about general financial misery is irrelevant if there are jobs going undone and people unwilling to chase them.

That had been 50% of my motivation to fix the tractor myself.  The other 50% was a voyage of discovery that had long ago run aground.

Scoff if you like but that’s just the way of life in America in 2011 (now 2012).  A score of very skilled tractor mechanics live within an hour’s drive.  All men and most older than dirt.  Fellows that can resurrect a tractor like it’s a gift.  But none, and I mean none, would work on someone else’s tractor.

Several offered to buy my tractor (for parts…nyuk nyuk) and even sell me one of their tractors (many were shiny, rebuilt, and freshly painted).  But that’s it.  That’s the “new labor market”, buy my tractor, rebuild it, and then sell it.  The market for buying and selling things still exists but not the market for labor.

I didn’t want a “new” old tractor.  I’d come a long way with my personal tractor.  There are many like it but this one is mine.  To have it fixed I would have to either tow it several hundred miles (lacking a suitable truck) to places that specialized in “museum quality” restoration.  I didn’t want a  restoration.  I wanted a rebuild.  There’s a big difference.

This Catch 22 persisted until I got a glimmer of hope.  In retrospect I can’t believe what happened.  Like many seemingly good ideas, this one originated in a bar.  I found an ad, scrawled on paper, for a guy who would “fix cars and trucks and things”, pinned on the wall near the can.

Desperate men make desperate moves.  I made the call.  More later…

Folks, it’s New Year’s day.  I’ve got shit to do.  I don’t have time to write the next part of the tractor saga.  So I’ve decided to shorten the next part to just a paragraph.  Ahem:

“If something isn’t working.  And you’re pissed off.  And you’re the kind of fellow that has a big chain and a truck… You might be thinking that the chain and truck will solve your problems.  This is an excellent time to sip a nice cup of tea and then go to bed.  You might even want to pour a fifth of whiskey in the tea.  By all means it’s a wise idea to: Put.  The.  Chain.  Down.”

Now I know what you’re thinking.  No I didn’t flay myself to death.  Nor did I leave truck or tractor in a smoking ruin.  But I did look like an ignorant asshole trying to get that damned tractor running.  Enough that my neighbors probably sat in lawn chairs with binoculars taking notes and gossiping.  Fuck em! I am surprised that my wife, who drove the truck a few miles going back and forth for hours, is still speaking to me. In fact, she even had kind words and a pat on the back – I looked just that desperately pathetic.

The tractor did not run.  It turned but didn’t fire or even hint that it ever had, would, or in any conceivable future universe might, run.

I parked it for another month.  My lawn hadn’t been mowed in so long that it began to evolve opposable thumbs and the EPA started declaring it an official wilderness area.

I decided I’d rather be stacking firewood.  I did well on the firewood front.  (Today, in January, that seems like a good trade off.)