1, 2, 3, 4 ... when you're dead, infinity - March 2010

1, 2, 3, 4 ... when you're dead, infinity - March 2010

 

With the grandchildren, as with my own children, I often feel overwhelmed with a feeling of love for them. I try to contain the feeling at times - don’t know exactly why - but more often let it go and say "I love you" whenever the mood strikes.

So invariably a few times per day I can be heard asking Johnny, “John – how much does papa love you?”

John varies his response. He either gives back a number or recites the learned answer, “Too much.”

Today it’s the numbers.

“Ten,” he says.

“More than that,” I say.

“A hundred.”

“More than that.”

“A billion.”

“Nope more.”

“A thousand hundred.”

“Still more,” I say.

“When you’re dead?” he says.

John is four. In recent months he has asked when I would be dead. Mostly this was after we rode past the cemetery on Ridgedale Avenue. I think I responded with something like “A long time.” So I’m guessing that he figured that the answer to ‘when I’d be dead’ was something bigger than 70, which he knows is my age now. Then he put two and two together and calculated that “when I’d  be dead” was indeed a very big number, and therefore a good answer to “How much does papa love you?” Smart huh?

To John, the “when you’re dead” number is, obviously, a real number, nothing imaginary like the square root of a negative two. I don’t know where it fits exactly in his counting sequence but just last week Johnny and I were in the grocery store and he pointed to some cookies that he wanted.

 

“Too much money,” I said.

 

“How much are they?” he said.

 

“Lots.”
 

"How much," he pleaded.
 

"Lots," I repeated. 

 

So he guessed, “When you’re dead?”

 

There was a mother in the aisle with us and she let out a gasp, then laughter. “Did she get it?” I wondered. 

I’m not sure that, without our experience together, I would have connected the dots relative to John’s words, but it seemed that the young mother did. Or perhaps she was only responding to the sound of the phrase itself. Four-year-old in the grocery store talking to old grandpa – and he shouts, “When you’re dead.” Sort of funny, no?

Or, my take: adorable.

The fossils - March 2011

The fossils - March 2011

 

Johnny asked me yesterday, “Papa, did the fossils kill Jesus?” At age 4+, he’s in his last year of Catholic pre-school. 

 

“Fossils?” I say.

 

“Yes, the fossils.”

 

What? You mean fossils, those imprints in rocks - of insects and leaves?”

 

“No not fossils – fossils”

 

“Huh?”

 

“Not fossils, fossils, there’s an ‘A’”

 

“You mean Pharisees?”

 

“No fossils. with A”

 

“Oh – apostles!”

 

“Yes. Did they kill Jesus Papa?”

 

“No they were his friends.
 

"Who killed Jesus?"
 

" … ahhh … bad people, not the apostles.”

Super handy power mower mechanic guy - 2011

Super handy power mower mechanic guy - 2011

 

A power lawnmower, vintage 2007 has a starter cord that you yank to get it going. It also has a choke, usually a rubber bubble-ball that is pressed to send gas into the carburetor (carburetor, is that right?). So on Sunday when I got out to mow the lawn, I press the bubble and yank the cord, except that the pull of the cord meets with a stronger than usual resistance. I try again and again. It seems to be getting more difficult. Finally it won’t budge at all. I step back to rest. I look at the mower, trying to contemplate its age - then I mentally divide the cost - I guess $175 – by the 3 years I’ve owned it, and arrive at a little less that $60 per year. “Ok, maybe this mower is shot,” I think, “Time for a new one.” 

I give it another try. I pull the cord again. Now it’s completely, frozen (not the right word, I know), tangled or knotted maybe. Several more tries and finally I give up. If I could take it apart, I could probably see the problem and untangle the cord if that’s the issue, which it most likely is – I guess. I look over the mower and notice some screws/bolts holding the various pieces together. I go inside and look for wrenches. I locate ratchet wrench set in a box with a handle and a number of round wrench fittings. 

 

None of the wrench fittings fit the various bolts. 

 

I see another box. More individual wrench fittings, no handle though. Seriously? How does the handle disappear?

OK, back to the mower. There’s a plastic guard cover. I loosen two screws and remove it. OK. The next candidate for removal is the part that contains the wheel that the pull cord wraps around. I look for bolts, screws and spot maybe four, maybe eight. The only wrench fittings that fit are the ones with no handle. I spend a good half hour trying to find the missing handle. No luck.      

I decide to wait until tomorrow.

Tomorrow comes. I’m at the mower again. I locate a ratchet screwdriver with fittings that work for some of the screws/bolts.  

 

After much labor – loosening screws in positions that only a career mechanic could access – I manage to lift off the top. Whoops – the whole cord assembly comes off with the top too. OK – wow. Though all I have done is remove eight screws, I am quite proud of myself. Thus I start imagining an ultimate triumph. I've actually fixed a broken lawn mower.  I begin to construct my successful super-handyman story as I continue dismantling the mower. Whom will I tell?

Holding the removed assembly in my hand I tug the cord. No resistance. Hmmmmm. I peer down at the mower, see the flywheel (is that the name?). There’s a brake pad pressing against the flywheel. I immediately deduce that it is this that is keeping the flywheel from turning. Then it hits me. With my hand I clamp the safety handle and the brake pad disengages. Then it hits me again. The reason that the cord could not be pulled – way back when - is that I was not holding down the safety handle – something I have done for - I multiply 25 lawn mowings per year by 3 years and come up with 75 -  so that’s for each of the past 75 uses of the mower.

OK, so I didn’t really have to take apart the mower. You see – the flywheel is locked by a brake-pad whenever the safety handle is not clamped snug with the push-handle. Everyone knows that.

Perhaps not all mowers are constructed like this (this is a guess), however I suspect they are. Face it - dumb me. Still I feel somewhat mechanically inclined. Actually, I’m pretty much super handy about things. I just took apart a whole mower.

Ok, moving on, I'll admit that putting mowers back together is not really my forte.  Witness that I spend the better part of the day on this task and succeed – mostly – save for one extra bolt and one rather large hard rubber washer – where did that come from?

I try to start the mower – the ultimate test.

 

It starts. Cool! I feel accomplished – somewhat. There is a bit of a clanking sound. The extra bolt, or rubber washer, I deduce, belongs somewhere, and needs to be put back in. The clanking is mostly noticeable at startup. I go into the garage and look for the washer. I give it fifteen minutes. I can't find the washer. Back to the mower. I start it up again. Still going, but a definite clanking.

I tell myself that it is God’s will. If He/She wanted to stop the clanking then … well you get the idea. 

Stories D'Amour

Stories D'Amour 

Nothing we (speaking for myself) like more than to tell someone one of our love stories. Young or old, they’ve always popular, especially with the one doing the telling. Don’t know if their popularity increases as we age, but it seems certain that the thoughts of past love does not diminish. To an extent I think that it may even grow, as it blurs. Perhaps, however, there are not as many people around to listen. That’s another thing.

Max, my father-in-law, had a favorite love story. Right before Alice Shrade died she told her daughter, “Call Max Dopson and tell him I died.” Alice was Max’s high school girlfriend and Max came to NJ to live with his daughter when he was ninety. He lived to 96 and in the six years he and I logged a good many hours together, riding in the car, long walks, breakfast, lunch, you name it, just the two of us, to and from on various excursions. I probably heard the “Alice Shrade Story” (among others) a dozen times.

Obviously it made Max feel wonderful the he was remembered. And it was a love story that I enjoyed hearing as well. And could I just take a moment here to apologize to Max for, more than once, blurting out the punch line? Sorry Max.

Max would start the story – no segue required – “You know Alice Shrade, she was my girlfriend. She passed away. And when she died, you know what she said to her sister …?” This is where – a couple of times – I would butt in,  “Yes I know – ‘tell Max Dopson’.”

“Right,” Max would say.

“That’s nice, isn’t it?” I'd say.

 “Yes, that she thought of me.”

 And so we would continue our drive, rolling along the road, life’s highways, we the living.  

 I liked Max’s Alice Shrade story, enough so that I thought perhaps I should think of a person or two to tell of my passing (I was born in 1940). Not so much that they would be informed, but if they were anything like Max, or me, despite some sadness, I think that it would make them feel good and perhaps some day they would tell the story to their grandchild, the story of how I thought of them, right before I passed away. Something nice to leave someone - no?

 It sure made Max happy ...  to be remembered so.

Remembering Field Day, 2009

Remembering Field Day, 2009

     

   Yesterday I walked down the block, with Emma, a distance of five houses. She started to run at the halfway mark and I chased after her, laughing and shouting, “I’ll catch you.” 

I didn’t come close. 

What I did, was pull a hamstring. Emma is eight and I guess the truth is now if I were to enter a field day race at Briarwood Elementary School I could neither win, nor finish in the money. Actually, I probably couldn’t finish. 

I should mention here that I won the field day fifty yard dash in the fifth grade in Warwick, NY at the high school track, circa 1950, but lost by a step in the sixth grade to Brad Piggery.