TO MOW OR NOT TO MOW , THAT IS THE PITS

So last Tuesday my wife and I traveled to Sears and bought a new riding mower. A mulching mower, electric start, 30" blade (single), fully automatic transmission, yada yada yada. I drove back on Wednesday morning to pick it up. Got there at 9:20 AM. Pick-up area doesn't open until 10 AM. Went to McD's and got breakfast, a paper, came back, parked and ate breakfast and scanned the news.

At 10:05 AM put pick-up receipt in slot and bingo, here it comes. I asked a simple question "Is the mulching attachment coming with it, or do I have to wait?" They do not know. They scurry around for fifteen minutes and no one knows what the mulching attachment is. I got down on hands and knees, felt the blade and it appeared to be a mulching blade. Then I asked where the side chute is, in case I decide to blow it out the side. No one knows. We have to walk around to the parts department and order it. Walk back to pick-up and the mower has been placed back in stock. The guy brings it out and loads it on the truck. After tying it down, making sure parking brake is set, I bring it home. Placed boards up to bring it off truck and cannot do it, the mower housing is catching on tailgate. I call up my engineering department (that is the other side of my brain, it takes a minute or two to reach there.) Solution--let down tailgate of old truck (tailgate hangs down at slant since no chains to hold it, back up new truck to overlap tailgate, move to old truck, move new truck out of way, put down boards for it to run on and, Voila, new mower is on driveway. Damn, my engineering department is good.

Read instruction manual, put gas in tank, check oil, all ok. Check all areas and turn key to start. RRRRR, RRRRR, rrrrr, clunk, clunk, clink clink. Battery dead. OK. Check date of battery-12/07, should be good. Get cables and jump from old truck. Starts up and runs well. But how do I stay in seat, disconnect jumper cables, and keep it running? Engineering?

Deadman switch can be controlled by placing foot hard on it, but easiest is to disconnect cables at truck and let it run to charge battery. So I do, by stretching this old body farther than it needs to be stretched. Truck is still running in neutral, mower is running. I let it go for about five minutes, plenty of time to get some charge in battery. Shut off mower, disconnect cables, close compartment. Shut off truck. Get back on mower, depress clutch, hit starter, RRRRR, rrrrr, clunk, clink, clink. Battery dead.

So I'm trying to think of a way to get the thing recharged without a huge amount of work. Aha, get my battery charger out of garage and hook it up to battery. Great. Except my charger has gone on the fritz, too. And while looking at it, I notice the rod that supports the compartment while open is supposed to be straight, and it is in the shape of a 'C'. Major pissed off. Next thought was to put it back on truck and return it. Then I remember the difficulty in getting it off. Got to be much more major pissed off to go through all that. Called Service Department, got some one in Phillipines, finally got switched back to Arizona where I set up service call for next week, 28th earliest can get here.

Wife even more ticked than me. She suggests returning. I tell her of the difficulty in getting it off the truck. We agree to be reasonable about this. She calls Sears sales floor and they tell her to bring the battery to their Parts Department and they will exchange.

Next morning I removed battery and returned to Sears Parts Department. They tell me I have to go to Sales Department to make the exchange. I then told them I wanted to order the rod (even told them I was willing to pay for it and even wait to have it delivered via USPS. No, they tell me, that also has to be done through the Sales Department. I ask why? Because it is a new mower. I can feel the major coming on again.

Well under control, I walked to the Sales Department. There were probably two customers and six or seven clerks. But no one inquires why I am standing there with a battery in my hand. Finally after about three passes past the counter where I am standing, one asks if he can help me. I explain. He says I have to handle the affair through the Parts Department. I reply that no, he can handle it through the Parts Department, that I have walked all I intend to walk. I told him that if he could not handle the exchange, that perhaps he needs to get his manager there to do so.

He asks to be excused for a moment so he can confer with other clerks. I say sure, I'm not going anywhere until I have my new battery. After about five minutes, another clerk asks me if he can help me. I said someone was trying to do so, but it had been a while since I saw him. So I explain again what the problem is. And all of a sudden, here is the woman who sold us the unit. And she gives me the same song and dance about seeing the Parts Department. By this time my cool is hot. I told her that I was not going anywhere, that if she intended to save the sale, she had best get on the stick and do her job. She then tells me that it will be a warranty exchange. I said no, that the sale has not been completed as a workable product has not been delivered and no charge to any warranty will be allowed, that I will simply go home, load the unit on my truck and bring it back, at which point she can issue me a check for the exact same amount my check was for, or give me cash, didn't matter to me.

Something must have clicked in her brain. For suddenly, I was handed a side chute, the rod, and a battery. This after over an hour of trying to get them to do their job.

Dumb me. I forgot to look at the replacement battery. I knew, because she told me, that she had taken all three parts from another mower to give to me, and dumb me, I forgot to look at the date on the replacement battery. I had gotten all the way outside and was putting the items into my truck when I remembered. Now, was that replacement battery charged? I took it to their Auto Center and, no, it was dead, but chargeable. That they did and an hour later I came home, after the guy in the Auto Center told me that Sears didn't even use that brand battery any more. I looked at the date and it was 01/07, eleven months older than the one I gave them back.

Back home. Battery back in mower. RRRRR, RRRRR, rrrrr, rrrr, clunk, clunk, clink, clink. Jump started it. Let it run for five minutes. Disconnect jumper cables. Hit starter, engine catches and I take it for a trial spin, cut two small sections of yard, probably about 30 minutes worth. Shut engine off. Start engine. Again. Again. Remove old rod, replace with new one. Leave side chute in truck. Put mower in garage.

Next day about 10 AM, I go to garage, start mower. Shut off, restart mower, shut off.

Monday, 19th. I string trim entire yard, inside and outside fence. Wife gets back from doctor appointment, we eat lunch and decide to mow yard. She will get outside gate along road, I will get inside with new mower. Back it out of garage and you guessed it, won't start. I try to jump, won't start. She will go to Sears and get resolution, I will mow with old self-propelled until she returns. Poor old Sears, they just do not know what a whipsaw they have had unleashed on them. But they found out.

She took battery with her, sales slip also. Goes directly to Sales Department. They say they cannot do anything, has to be handled by Parts and Repair. She tells them no. If they cannot handle it, get their supervisor. If supervisor is unable to handle it, get store manager. If store manager cannot, get location manager, and if they cannot handle it, send a truck to come and get it. That is their options. Pick one and do it. But it will be done that day.

Then she makes sure that the sign is still up that it is supposed to be a Die-Hard battery. The one she has is not, so she insists that only a Die Hard is acceptable. Like chickens with their heads cut off, scurrying around geting nothing done. A person who appeared to be a supervisor
appears on the scene. But no one knows the proper computer codes to do what needs to be done. She uses my technique, that is their problem, not mine, I just want my product usable, so do what ever needs to be done to get the customer happy.

The woman who sold the mower to us appears. And denies that she made the exchange with me. Denies that she gave me that battery. But finally is forced to admit what she has done, when the floor manager gets there, finally. Before he got there, they were informed the location manager was unavailable, was in a meeting and could not be disturbed, to which my wife replied that they better get someone really quick.

So they asked for the exchange receipt that I was to have been given. Of course there was none. They insisted there had to be one, that nothing could be done without one, that I could not have been given those parts without an exchange receipt. It was at this point the saleswoman finally admitted what she had done, which I'm sure endeared her to the floor manager.

So the decision was made to give my wife a new (03/08) Die Hard battery. My wife took it to the Auto Center and had it charged. (By the way, the Auto Center did not present a bill for the charging either time.) She brought it home, I put it in the mower, and it works like a charm. So far.

Which brings me to this conclusion. It is quite apparent that no one in the Lawn and Garden Department can think. Give them anything out of the ordinary, and they are lost. Unless it is on the computer screen, they don't know it exists. If what appears on the screen does not match reality, they do not know where to go to correct it.

I am very disappointed with Sears. As I usually am. But, dammit, they do have good products. Craftsman mowers are the best we have been able to find. But their Sales, Parts and Service departments are pure crap. And the only way to get satisfaction is to go to their store managers in most cases. If it doesn't fit their own prescribed mold, it is impossible for them to use their brain to solve a problem.

So we now have a riding mower with a three year warranty on parts and labor, in home service. If you can get them here within a reasonable time period. But judging from this last effort, two weeks is not a reasonable time. And their 'sometime from 8 AM to 5PM' is not acceptable either. Hell, even I could predict whether it would be morning or afternoon, even from two weeks out. If I couldn't, I would say one or the other anyway, and correct it as the time and situation drew nearer to when I could predict with some certainty.

I canceled the service call, by the way.

A Missive From Miss Sellaneous

Sorry.

My life is just a little too cluttered right now to do much blogging. I'm lucky to get a couple of hours to read other people's blogs and the local rags' forums. Too much mowing, too much social crap, too much springtime getting it all together so the place looks the way I want it to look.

I got the garden in and everything is up and growing, even the weeds--or, especially the weeds. But I can't do anything about that, it is too wet. The cicadas are driving me crazy and they haven't even begun their whine (as of this evening, anyway.) Can't really mow the yard yet, with the swamp area just that.

I did buy a new mower, a riding thing that is small enough to get around flowerbeds but large enough to use on the whole place. Got it at Sears. Normal problems like a dead battery, bent props and the like. I think I have them all worked out now.

Attended a funeral yesterday. My sister-in-law's mother. Good old woman. Got a lot more information that goes into the genealogy (now over 48,000) . Funny thing, a week or two ago I am reading this book, and the guy gives a little genealogical info on his family. Damned if we aren't related--far off but related. My Farleys and his Farleys cross. A nd that puts him into my wife's family too, because her Farleys are sometimes my Farleys. Plus this author has McWhorters in his family, as do I. So I copied his couple of pages on my copier and have been adding data to my files. I look for 50,000 to be here before July 4.

We have been talking about moving my wife's family reunion next year from her sister's house to one of the parks located in the area. So far we have surveyed four of the seven and they all think it is a good idea, but none of them will run with it. Guess it will be my wife and I going it alone again. As usual. We started the reunion back in 1980, and it looks like it is about time to take it in hand again and get it located somewhere permanently.

My brother and sister apparently got their e-mail system fixed so they can now send as well as receive. I just got pictures of a grandnephew and his date for the junior/senior prom this year. Handsome couple. He is a junior at HHS.

I'll try to get back to doing some writing in the evenings after things settle down, probably in a couple of weeks. Until then it is going to be rather sporadic.

I checked my e-mail this evening and discovered that overnight 7 had been deposited and 1 during the day today. So I start in, the first two were from my grandson, the first was blank, the second was to ask me to ignore the first. Good start, huh? The next three were pix I mentioned above, and the next was supposed to be a pix of just my grandnephew. It ended up as ASCII characters. Next to last was a thing my sister-in-law sent (a fwd, and I hate fwd's) about the Holocaust. The last was an attempt to give me a link to a quiz. This one started out coming from my daughter's friend up in northeast Ohio. After two attempts to get the link from her I gave up, then my daughter sends me the same thing, and damned if it didn't have the link either. She tried to resend it but it still wasn't there. I went to Google and found it, took the quiz and discovered that I scored 67% Dixie. A lot of the answers indicated that normally people from Michigan answered that way. Since I lived in SOUTHERN Michigan, I guess they converted those to Dixie scores, too? As a matter of fact, I lived one block off the Dixie Highway! If you want to take the quiz, go to Google--"Yankee quiz", you'll find it.

I'm outta here. Time for a jolt of joe and a short read before bed. See y'all. You all. All of you'se.

MAPLE CREEK MEMORIES XXIV

UP THE BRANCH

Part VIII


During the warm days, we all got together with our friends around the area and played there around our house. Many times it devolved into just the four of us and a kid who lived on up the hollow, and then we usually played baseball.None of us were particularly good
at it but we loved to pretend we were.

Living out in the country and not wanting to walk all the way down to the schoolyard, we would play in the dirt road that went past the house. Always at our house, because the road was much wider there than anywhere else.


A very few times, we actually had a real baseball. But mostly we had a taped up ball or, sometimes, we wrapped twine around a rock and taped it up--but it was a ball at least. Bats were occasionally real ones, but many times just a handy stick. Bases were dried up mud puddles--well, most of the time they were dried up, but sometimes we just went ahead and got wet.


With five boys total, we had three on each team. Simple math. Two permanent on each team , one rotating from team to team. Sometimes it was two per team and one always pitching for both teams, or catching, or wherever. Actually catching was what was needed most, because the pitching got pretty wild at times and we needed someone to shag the balls behind the batter. I was the youngest. You know who rotated, who pitched, who caught, who shagged--yeah, me.

There was a sixth position needed, so we all rotated through that position. That was the 'caller.' He had the responsibility, no matter what else he was doing, of watching for traffic and calling out "car coming" so we could get out of the way. This was only necessary because the drivers would not stop or swerve. In essence, at times, we played dodge ball--or ford ball--or chevy ball.

And though our talents were limited, our desire was not. We played with an intensity unmatched by real teams and would argue endlessly about whether a ball ws fair or foul. Or argue about safe/out calls. Did we EVER argue about safe/out calls. But that was more fun than actually playing the game, of course. We could have one or two plays and then argue all afternoon without even raising a sweat. What's wrong with that?

Towards the end of our careers, home plate was in the middle of the road, aligned with our mailbox, and second base was the last mudhole before the apple tree across the road from out front porch. Second base was slightly out of alignment because the mudhole was nearer the edge of the road beside the ditch than the center of the road, so the distance from first to second was a bit longer than from second to third. First and third bases were a weed and a large chunk of coal, respectively. Home plate ws a stick of wood laid crossways in the road.

The pitch ws made and a crack of the bat sent the ball through the infield. Carl (the kid from up the road) rounded first and headed into that long second base stretch. Nelson was there waiting and the throw came in at ground level. Nelson had it before the runner got there. Carl did his Fancy Dan slide, and that is something you don't do on a rocky road. Slide burns, gashes and blood all over. We patched him up, then told him he was out. And he argued. And argued. And argued. But he lost.

Carl swore that he'd never play ball there again, that we enjoyed seeing him get hurt. Well, maybe we did, but he came back again and again. Eventually he and I went to college together. He was the best man at my wedding and I at his. we remained friends for a while, but drifted apart. I moved to Texas and on to California, and we never got close again. He passed away a few years ago.

But memories remain.

[Insert "Huntin' Possum]

[Insert 'Cabin on the Hill]

Now that I'm thinking about that old cabin up there above the strawberry patch, it reminds me of all the times we we were back on that hill getting wood for the winter. We heated and cooked with coal and wood at that old house so we had to get in large amounts of wood during the summer in order for it to cure up for winter use. I never really calculated how much we would get in each year but it always seemed a prodigious amount. Let's see, four rows, two feet wide, and about 30 feet long-that's 240 square feet and we stacked it about six feet high, so that is 1,440 cubic feet and a cord is 128 cubic feet, so we had, oh, about 11 cords, give or take a little. And that would last about a year.

We'd go on the hill behind the house, sometimes as much as a half- to three-quarters of a mile up that ridge and cut trees in the early summer, sometimes as early as the late spring. We seldom cut anything later than mid-August as it would not dry in time for use. If we did, it was always an old dead tree. We always cut oak, hickory, ,locust, maybe an elm, hardwoods only--never pine or poplar or any of the softwoods. We tried to find trees that were anywhere from six to twelve inches in diameter, for it was much easier to bring them off the hill if they were smaller, and it did not take near the processing time once we got them home.

Naturally, as time went on, and the cutting continued, the supply got shorter and shorter and we had to move farther up the ridge to find the type trees we wanted. A few times we even went onto adjoining ridges to locate a good stand.

The tree cutter was always the oldest one there, unless our father went along. When he did, Paul or Nelson alternated with him in cutting the trees. We younger ones never got to touch the axe while on the hill unless our father said we could. We used a double-bitted axe which was kept sharp at all times. As any good axman can tell you, you never have to replace a good axe, but you only replace the handle. As I recall, we only had to do that twice in some fifteen years.

The trees were felled and limbed with the axe. Sometimes some of the limbs themselves were large enough to use as firewood and we would bring them off the hill too. Once we had a supply of logs ready to go, we attached them together with a chain and began the job of bringing them off the hill and into the back yard of the house. Sometimes the yard looked like a miniature lumberyard with all those logs waiting to be sawed into usable lengths. Many times, the tree cutter and another one of us would stay on the hill felling more trees while the others brought the previously cut logs to the house. That way we could get many more logs off the hill in a days time.

We had constructed sawhorses in the yard, actually just crossed timbers driven into the ground. Logs were placed on the horse and then were sawed into firewood lengths using a two-man crosscut saw. Smaller logs were chopped with the axe on the chopping log we kept in the yard.
A lot of chickens lost their lives on that old chopping log also. If splitting was needed, that was done as soon as the units were sawed off. We drove medium sized timbers into the ground at one side of the yard near the porch at the top of the bank, and at the walk coming off the porch. We stacked the firewood between these timbers for drying and storage until needed. We never covered the wood, preferring to let it air dry. If it rained, and it always did, only the top got wet anyway.


[Insert 'Blackberry Pickin' Time']

[Insert 'The Chicken Pluckers']

[Insert 'Telecommunications']

[Insert 'Big Yellow Schoolbus']