by Scott Whippo

I was once described by my youngest son as “The old bald guy standing in the corner.” I suppose to him I fit that description very well or I am sure he wouldn’t have used it. I don’t think of myself as old although I must admit I am thinning on top. Each of us has our own picture in mind of what we look like and what we sound like. I like to think I am tall and muscular but eye witnesses will tell you otherwise. I don’t like the sound of my own voice. I like to think I have a commanding voice, after all the government did spend money trying to teach me the “command voice” when I was a Second Lieutenant. I hope they don’t want their money back.

Those of you who have read my column before know I like to be independent. Unfortunately I am not as independent as I would like to think. I, too, need help sometimes, especially in all things mechanical.

I noticed that my gas mower wasn’t cutting as clean as it use to and it wasn’t mulching the grass either. I figured it would be an easy fix. All I need do was sharpen the blade. I do know enough about lawn mower blades to know that they must be balanced when you sharpen them or they will not function properly. So the obvious solution was to buy a sharpener and balancer designed for this purpose, take off the blade, sharpen it and put it back on.

I went to Lowes at Smokey Point and purchased a small kit designed for such activity. It had a sharpener that I could attach to my drill and a balancer made out of plastic. So far so good.

I then went home, lifted the mower on its’ side, put a 9/16” wrench on the bolt holding the blade in place and after I secured the blade, gave a mighty pull. Nothing. Not a fraction. Nada, zip. Obviously whoever put the bolt on last time used an air wrench to tighten in down beyond the ability of mere mortal strength to loosen it. This would take extreme measures to loosen. I sprayed the bolt with several different liquids designed to loosen frozen bolts and nuts. To no avail. This called for really extreme measures so I went to Arlington Hardware and got a hollow pipe to use as leverage in combination with the wrench.

I got home and tipped the mower on its side once again. Put the wrench over the bolt and slid the pipe down to the end of the wrench where it met the bolt. One good pull should do it.

After I stopped rubbing my strained arm I thought to myself perhaps I should take the mower in and have it done professionally. Meanwhile, my father, who really is an old man, kept offering his help. I didn’t want him to strain himself on something that was as difficult as this so I kept declining his kind offer. Finally to humor him I invited him to have a go at it even though I new it was a waste of his time.

He placed the wrench on the bolt and I immediately became nervous. It was obvious to me or anyone in my age group that not only was he not going to budge the bolt doing it the way he was, but most likely he was going to cut himself. Because I have such great concern for the health of such old men (the Second World War batch) I told him that I had tried loosening it that way and he was going to get hurt.

Thirty seconds later it happened. The bolt was loose and the blade was off and this WWll veteran didn’t look any the worse off then if he had just had a cup of coffee.

Old is relative I suppose so don’t mess with old relatives, they have been around awhile and probably know a whole lot more then you think you know.

Comments may be addressed to sdwhippo@yahoo.com.