Friday, January 29, 2016

ONE BROKEN THING AFTER ANOTHER

Mishaps, like other forms of bad luck, always come in threes, according to traditional wisdom. I’m living proof that they often comes in fours, fives and sixes.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m hell on wheels when it comes to trucks, tractors and trailers. I especially have problems turning right into my driveway while towing my 22-foot long horse trailer. I just don’t swing wide enough. Twice I’ve knocked stones out of one of my stacked-stone pillars.

This is how my gates are supposed to look.
I thought I was being extra careful a few weeks ago. “I can do this,” I told myself. There was no other traffic on the road, so I moved over into the left lane and made what I thought was a nice, wide turn. I thought I had cleared the pillars when I heard a scraping noise. “Uh-oh, there goes another stone,” I thought. I backed up a little, swung again and got through the gate. When I got out to look, there were no loose stones. “Yay!” I said to myself. I spoke too soon, because I had dented my right rear fender on the trailer. Bummer.

Before I could get it fixed, I ran into a pasture gate with the bucket of my tractor. I had no excuse about right or left turns or not being able to see well. I just wasn’t paying attention. The bucket bent the gate pretty bad, and I couldn’t close it. Bummer No. 2.

One day when my handyman, Floyd Plummer, and his grandson, Scott, were here working on some other projects, I got him to fix the gate. Then I asked him to bend the trailer fender back into place, so it wouldn’t rub the tire. While he was working on that, I headed to the hardware store for some part he needed. I didn’t open my front gates all the way, trying to shave a few seconds off my time. I’ve done it before with no problem. However, going through partially-opened gates in a Prius is quite different than in a one-ton dually, as I discovered much too late. I knocked one of the gates completely off its hinges and into my pond. I also broke the front mount that holds the mechanical gate arm to the gate. Bummer No. 3.

Floyd and Scott wrestled the heavy gate back onto its hinges while I was running my errand. They also hammered out the huge dent I had put in it. But they were unable to unscrew the old front mount, leaving us to believe I would have to invest into a new gate arm. As if that weren’t enough, wrenching the gate off apparently drove the post that holds it down into the grown so much that the bent gate hung a foot lower than the other one. Bummer No. 4.

Floyd and Scott spent several hours yesterday working on that blasted gate. They had to pull the pole out of the ground with tractor and chain, break up the old cement and reset the pole. I couldn’t get out of my driveway while the cement was drying.  Floyd came up this morning and put the new front mount in place and hooked the arms back to the gates. Guess what? They don’t work! The power is still on at the gate and the fuses are good. But even the ever-true doorbells that open the gates from house and driveway aren’t working. I must have fried something in the control board. Bummer No. 5! I called my “gate man,’ who will come up this afternoon and check it out.

One more mishap will make six. Or does accidentally activating the child lock on my washing machine and having to call LG count? Either way, I believe I’ve met my quota for the year.

1 comment:

  1. How AWFUL! But then again... how fortunate that every "mishap" involves injury only to equipment. No human injuries!

    ReplyDelete