OK, Farmer

"OK, Farmer" was originally published in the Seaway Valley Cruisers Classic Car Club, Inc.'s April, May, and June edition newsletter. 

Stan came over to help me install new windows and doors at my house. Stan was losing his vision. I didn’t hire him for his eyes. I employed him for his extensive experience. 

He put me to work unpacking the new items from the 1,700 square feet of cardboard confinement, and the 986 individual molded Styrofoam corner pieces under his myopic supervision. He critically eyed some of my previous repairs, occasionally grunting and sporadically questioning my decision. 

“Why did you build Adirondack chairs out of cherry?” he barked at me. 

“It’s what I had,” I answered. 

“OK, farmer,” he grunted. “You should have used cedar.” 

For Stan, this wasn’t a new criticism of my carpentry. I like to use what I have on hand. Stan hates cherry and I’m not sure why. 

He also would get angry if I switched between Torx and Phillips head screws – even if it was just one on an interior wall assembly that would be covered with insulation and plaster. “Why’d you go and do that?” 

“It’s what I had” or “It’s what I could find” were my typical responses. 

“OK, farmer,” he said disapprovingly. 

I’m not a farmer. I’m not particularly good at growing plants. I don’t ride horses. I’m lactose intolerant and never liked milk. My father was raised on a small farm with chickens and other animals. His family didn’t have a lot of money and made do with what they had, which led to some creative and sometimes downright questionable decisions. 

My grandfather once built a lathe out of cast-iron pipe fittings powered by whatever motor he had on hand. When he passed away, I asked my father about the assembly. He responded to my request by buying me a complete lathe off eBay. He said Grandpa’s assembly wasn’t safe for any kind of use unless I desired to have metal parts flung at my face at high speeds. 

One of my friends grew up on a dairy farm. Randy told me about a time when the accelerator broke on a farm truck while he was driving it on the road. He fished through the truck bed for something to help get him out of trouble. In a brilliant bit of ingenuity, he attached a length of baling twine and a bicycle innertube to the throttle control assembly on the carburetor. He ran it through the driver’s side window so he could manually control the crippled vehicle. He said it worked fine if he ran it wide open or completely closed. It operated more like an on-off switch than a gas pedal with the subtle amounts of throttle control we’re all used to. 

More recently, I went to get my motorcycle out of storage. This required taking the battery off the charger, finding the key for the storage unit, packing up the small socket set, a helmet, goggles, and a coat. I also had to wrangle my eldest child to give me a ride, who sighed in displeasure at the interruption from her day of doing nothing. I estimated that it would take less than an hour, which is about all I had before I needed to bring my youngest to an appointment. 

The battery is annoying. It has these copper tabs set up to be side or top-mounted with bolts and nuts. When I loosen the bolts to remove the positive and negative cables and remove the cell from its housing, the nuts fall and are immediately lost forever. I was prepared for this and packed an extra bolt and nut. 

We started out about 15 minutes late. I didn't remember where the storage unit was, so we drove past it and had to turn around in busy traffic. 

When I get to the storage unit, I plunk the battery with nuts positioned correctly in the terminals in about 10 minutes. The battery doesn’t have a handle, which means I had to grip it by two slight recesses on the top with my fingertips and slide it down into its box, the bike. It goes in easier than it comes out. 

Next, I tighten the bolts, which are two different sizes, with the negative terminal being SAE and the positive being metric. Of course, the red cable connecting the bolt is about half an inch too long. It’ll send power to the ignition, but if it moves, the bike will stall. Not exactly a reliable solution. 

I start hunting around in my car for a solution. I’ve had this problem before. I’ve solved it by threading a nut up to the head of the bolt so that it will seat the cable to the terminal correctly. I didn’t have an extra 11 mm nut. 

Some of Randy’s baling wire might have gotten me out of the pickle. All I could find was a golf tee in my car. I don’t golf. I think I picked it up, fearing that someone might run over it and puncture a tire. I tried to wedge in the space between the bolt and the terminal. It didn’t yield productive results. I now have 15 minutes before I have to bring the youngest to their appointment. I called it a practice run, and we went back home. 

The next day, I grab a new 11 mm nut from my supply and conned my eldest into giving me a ride. Repeat the previous day’s events without overshooting the destination. It turns out that the bottom nut isn’t threading onto my newly prepared bolt. It won’t even thread enough to get it started. Out comes the battery for the 47th time. I tried flipping the bolts and nuts from the negative terminal, but they are of different sizes and species. I probably had them left over from some project – or swept them up off my cellar floor. 

I give up and have the eldest bring me to the hardware store for new bolts and nuts. Not only had I previously replaced the negative fastener situation, but I’d also ground down two sides of the nut so that it would slip beneath the copper terminal. I had to borrow a screwdriver from the friendly folks at Ace Hardware to remove the old nut from beneath the terminal. 

I bought brand-new shiny 11 mm nuts and bolts. Knowing my propensity to lose them, I even bought back-ups to keep with the motorcycle or battery. In all, it cost me $2.90. 

We get back to the storage unit with the battery, bolts, nuts, and spare parts in hand. I place the nuts in their proper location under the copper terminals, and they immediately slide to the side-mount position. I can’t hook the wires up to the front face of the battery. Remove the battery, reposition the nuts, and try again. I fail again. 

The cables aren’t long enough to hook up the battery without it being placed in its box. I begin to scan the floor of my storage unit for a solution. I find a piece of a tag with a printed barcode sticker still on it, so I tear it in half and wedge the curled-up end just beneath the nut under each terminal, which holds the nut in a position where I can grab the threads correctly. 

An intelligent mechanic would have probably removed the accessory paper spacers before heading down the road. I’m neither particularly smart nor a mechanic. 

Famers, particularly those from the Depression era, lived by the famous adage, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without” when money was scarce. I love this cliché and rejoin it with a more modern one, “Done is better than perfect.” 

I have no qualms about spending money on bolts, screws, or even wood for my projects. I’ve upgraded my lathe so I can turn larger bowls. For me, the resourcefulness of using whatever you have is about time and results. Whenever I’m not doing the project, I set out to accomplish, I feel like I’m wasting time. Each minute is a precious commodity. This is compounded by the fact that I typically don't want to be doing any projects that take more than an hour. 

Whenever I’m doing something, I probably should be doing something else. Even while authoring this piece, I should be cleaning the living room or maybe making a new throttle return spring out of leftover baling wire for my neglected lawn tractor. I also have a nice 16-inch-long branch of cherry wood chucked into my lathe. Maybe I’ll make it into a vase for Stan. 

“Why’d you use cherry?” he’ll ask. 

“My friend Brandon just cut one down and gave me my choice of the wood,” I’ll tell him. 

“Ok, farmer.”