Bonechilling Summer
Longtime readers will recall that the first of many bonechilling story ideas I’ve detailed here had to do with several nuts I found in my driveway, they having evidently quit the job of being attached to whatever vital bolt they were supposed to be on. As it turns out, one of them had fallen off my wheelbarrow, and the other two had come from the depths of my snowblower, where they had apparently been filling some redundant function, since it got along nicely until it went in for a carburetor overhaul last fall. But I’m not here to revisit old bonechilling ideas, but to present a new one, which is similar in many ways, but a new twist on an old theme.
I recently had to order a new axle for my brushcutter, because it looked like this, which gives you a nice view of the differential:
So they sent me this, which is all nice and shiny, and has the differential gears tucked away inside where they are meant to be, though the perceptive among you may notice that it is also several inches longer than the old one:
But, but! Do you see that little baggie taped to the new axle? That there is a little hitch clip. Here is is close up, on top of the old axle:
“Well, all right”, you say, “so they sent you a hitch clip just in case you lost the old one during the rather strenuous process of swapping out the new axle for the old one. The folks at Country Home Products are just watching out for you, Williams.” But there is no old one, don’t you see? As far as I can tell, not only is there no hitch clip on the axle, there is none anywhere on the mover. I can only see two possibilities. One, I have somehow missed the pin somewhere in the whole assemblage that needs the hitch pin to stay on, and when I use the mower the wheels will fall off when I’m going up a hill about a mile from home and the mower (capable of slicing through two-inch tree trunks) will roll over me while it is running. Or two, the Country Home people know perfectly well there is not hitch pin on this mower and they taped a little baggie holding one to my axle in an attempt to drive me mad. “I’m sorry,” they will say in a sympathetic tone if I call, “We didn’t send you a hitch clip. We don’t even carry hitch clips. Are you sure you’ve been getting enough rest? Seeing non-existent hitch clips is a classic sign of exhaustion and brain fever, I’m afraid. Did you hear about that man in Idaho who went crazy and tried to eat a Volkswagen? He was raving about hitch clips when they hauled him away.” It’s going to be a long summer.
Ha! You forgot the obvious answer; conspiracy by jealous writers. It’s obvious disgruntled as of yet unpublished writers, not saying who mind you, but they have amassed a best of collection of rejection letters and are busy adding names in their Book of Grudges.