Living in an I Love Lucy Rerun

Reader Contribution by Mary carton
Published on July 18, 2011
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Here lately I’ve been feeling like I’m part of an I Love Lucy rerun.  I can’t decide if it’s the Lucy the wallpaper hanger or Lucy the candy maker, Lucy trying to get to Europe inside a steamer trunk or Lucy the grape stomper at the vineyards in Italy.  I’ll be humming “Fly in the Buttermilk, shoo fly shoo,” now for a week. First I blew my knee out crawling up on a chair to change a light bulb 3 days before my high school reunion, which included a cookie, lemonade and garden tour at my house.

Since my house was fairly clean of dust bunnies and clutter, I decided to have an open garden.  I hooked up the tiller to my tractor to get rid of some of the grass growing in my garden paths and till the area along the dry creek for some oakleaf hydrangeas.  First along the garden, I thought I was a couple of inches from my summer time water line that runs from the garden to the dry creek. When I turned on the water to water a weeping willow tree I planted, I had a geyser. I had stopped just on top of it and cut it at each end of the tiller.  After replacing a four foot section which included a new faucet, I started digging along the water line rambling back and forth close to the dry creek.  I should have gee instead of haw as now I have a 200 foot section of little four inch long black hotdogs where the waterline used to be.  I wasn’t satisfied with taking out that section; I had to repeat the attack of the mad tiller on another section of the line, only it was a smaller scale this time. This big repair job is still on my To-Do list. Do you see why I recommend cut off valves for each section? I’ve decided that I’m too dangerous with a 31 hp John Deere and a four foot tiller, but not quite as dangerous as the one in James Bond. 

After I finished with the destruction, I pulled off the tiller and hitched up the mower. At some point I backed over a tree stump.  Just before I was completely finished, the belt broke.  The rest would have to wait until after the open garden brunch.   Straight line winds did a lot of damage a couple of days before. Power was knocked out for twelve hours. The brunch went just great, except for one stink that permeated the garage where everyone came in.  Blackie had been playing with a skunk.  

Afterwards, my attention turned to replacing the belt on my Big Bee mower.  My JD dealer didn’t give me an owner’s manual with it, so I didn’t know what size belt it needed. I found some information online and called the manufacturer in Red Bay.  It needs a B108 belt which is an 111 inch belt and not to get this one certain brand as it won’t last on the five foot finishing mower.  Why isn’t it called B111?    I called around and found the B108 at the repair shop in Tuscumbia.  I showed the remains of the old belt to the clerk and explained that the company told me not to use this one brand and they said it wasn’t.  As I was coming out of the store, this guy leans out the passenger window of a truck and asked if I planned to put that belt on. I told him that I was going to try.  He said I’m forty years old and it’s nice to see women my age doing thing like that.  I thanked him for the compliment as I was a lot older than that. 

Since I didn’t have the manual I again turned to the internet found a belt diagram and went out to the barn to put the belt on.  After weaving the belt around all of the pulleys the belt was too long. They sold me the wrong belt I thought to myself. Actually I told the hooligans who were impatiently waiting on supper.  So back into the house, look up the belt diagram, and back out to the barn and went over the belt placement again.  Well I have it right, but the belt is still too long.  Back into the house get on the internet, but this time I copied and pasted the diagram into a Word document and printed it out and went back to the barn. It was getting a little warm, so I moved my truck from the front of the door and back to the house garage so I could bring the tractor and mower out into fresh air.  When I got back to the mower, I was lacking the belt diagram I had printed out. I checked out my truck, not there, retraced my steps, still no diagram. Back into the house to reprint another diagram (glad I saved it) and back out to the barn I’m standing there looking at the diagram, looking at the pulleys with a too long belt, saying to myself “I have it on there right. Finally I noticed I had one turn wrong and corrected it.  Now the belt is too short; I could hold the spring pulley with both hands, but didn’t have a third hand to slip the belt over the last pulley.  I saw my neighbor Bob out in his garden, so I drove up to his place and asked for help putting it on.  I mowed for one hour and the $43 belt broke. After talking to a clerk at one of the auto supply companies, I found out the belt I was sold was not as good as the one the manufacturer told me not to use.  A local company looses my business as they wouldn’t make it good.

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