The other day I had strung out my 100' extension cord from the well-house, where there is a power-outlet, to the tractor barn, where there isn't. (It just barely reaches, and only if I sneak it in under the back wall of the barn and not around through the door.)
I needed power to run the grinder with a wire-wheel mounted on it to clean up a little spot - OK a big spot - of rust on the chipper before hitting it with some rattle-can rust-converter followed up with a shot of rattle-can sealer.
After I finished, as I was in the process of coiling up the extension-cord, I spotted something out there nestled in the weeds and under the downed oak-leaves that looked a little out of place
Can you see it there in the middle of the photo?
How 'bout now?
About four years ago, give or take a few months, I "misplaced" my claw-hammer.
OK, not so much misplaced as downright lost the dang thing. And being one of those 'core' tools everybody needs just to get along in this life, a dang thing I'd had for some thirty years or more!
Because I wasn't happy with myself for doing so, the losing part I mean, and because I have another claw-hammer in The Van's tool bag, as well as a smaller version in the collection of tools in The Wife's car, and an even tinier one (why I don't know!) in the kit down in the tractor-barn. I never made the effort to replace it.
But, because of that lack of effort, for four years now this empty slot in the shop's tool-cabinet has jeered at me.
Every time I glance over there I can hear the faint, sing-song sounds of a school-yard taunt. (Ha Ha! Look what you did!)
But that ends today!!
Because out here in an obscure corner of the property where I rarely walk, and have never actually worked on anything at all, let alone something requiring the application of a hammer, that missing tool was serendipitously laying at my feet.
And after being buried under four seasons of discarded oak-leaves, deluged by 171.67 inches of rain - plus or minus a few tenths -, surviving 3 ice storms, one actual snowfall, and a half-dozen or so passes of the brush-hog's whirling steel blades, it was looking pretty damn good!
Far better than I would have expected.
In fact, all I had to do was wire-brush off a little stubborn clay - I imagine I must have run over it with a tractor-tire and smushed it into the ground at least once during that time - and it was
ready to be finally returned to its rightful place.
The only think I can figure is that four years ago I did something to the tractor up at the main barn that required the services of a hammer and then just left the tool laying there somewhere on the tractor as I drove down to drop the brush-hog, (The only time I drive this bit of ground behind the tractor-barn is when I'm either shredding it or on my way to drop the brush-hog off where it lives beside the barn.) which was a pretty bone-headed stunt in anybody's book!
Now that serendipity seems to be in my court maybe I'll be able to find that power-washer tip I shot out into the field when I failed to seat it properly in the wand before pulling the trigger!
Great story.
ReplyDeleteGreat story for me, but not so great for the hammer which has been jerked out of a nice cushy bed of leaves and hung up by its armpits waiting to get bashed around.
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