Getting around

We had a busy day. 

The trucklet has been missing air conditioning for some time now.  That’s a big problem in the heat wave we’ve been having on the prairies.  I set out to do some farm calls yesterday and had to turn back because I simply couldn’t stand being cooped up in what amounted to a mobile greenhouse.  The previous day I left the truck at Ukrainian Tire for a diagnosis.  They concluded that I needed to spend in excess of $2000 to fix it.  Since I’d just as soon unload it on some poor hapless sap, the thought of pouring yet another 2 boat units into that piece of worthless Ford crap was unappealing.  I have in fact had it it listed on a couple of sales sites for a couple of months but so far no fools have emerged.  Perhaps I need to further lower my price; or give it to somebody that I really dislike.

The night of the July 1st party in Buchanan neighbour Michael introduced me to his mechanic.  I liked him so yesterday I phoned him and asked if he was interested in working on the Exploder AC.  He was, so this morning we left early heading for Buchanan.  Our intent was to leave the trucklet with Sergei and bring the car back for Marilyn to use next week.  On the way back we would go by Shields to take in Norma & Ron’s 50th wedding anniversary community party. 

Our plans got upset a bit when I got to Canora with the Exploder.  First off Sergei turned out to be booked up all next week, despite having assured me yesterday that he could work on the truck.  However as we discussed the situation we kind of arrived at a work around.  I didn’t want to spend a bunch of money on the truck; Sergei didn’t have time to work on it.  So instead we dumped 3 cans of refrigerant with leak seal into the system, I gave him a hundred bucks and we called it good enough.  Time will tell how well that plan works out but we had AC all day and so far I’m only out $100.  If it survives through August we won’t need AC again until next July.  And some summers we don’t really need it all summer.  In the meantime maybe some fool will come along and buy the piece of crap which I can now offer to the unsuspecting public for $2000 less than I had previously planned on.

I had intended to just drop the truck off in Canora and head directly to Shields.  All our buggering around took quite a bit longer than I had planned so we got busy and drove to Shields arriving just as the event had turned to story telling.  As we walked in the door Ron was in the middle of a story which was immediately followed by several of the attendees with their own stories.  They weren’t as bad as that kind of stories often are but some of them could have saved themselves the bother.  My favourite for the day was Ron’s retelling of the linoleum story.

The story is that my grandfather, Ron’s father, laid new lino in the farm kitchen sometime during the depression.  Evidently he had enough lino left over to cover the kitchen table.  Some local Irish bachelor, when he saw the table for the first time, said “By God Alec, if you come home drunk you won’t know if you’re eating off the table or off the floor.”  As Ron was quick to point out, that situation likely ensued because, while a very effective community leader and successful farmer, my grandfather was also an Irishman with all their reputed drinking tendencies.