Folks, as I'm sure you're all aware, this year is a major turning point in history, and will turn out to be marked as a major turn for the worse or better for the United States and the world given time. I have done my best to keep politics and religion out of this blog, being"serious" issues that don't necessarily fit with the lighthearted, entertainment tone and atmosphere I'm going for. Being a politics junkie who is fond of waxing philosophic about the role of religion in our society, though, that has been tough, and I have a lot to say about things. Before I get started soapboxing, though, I want to ask my readers' opinions on whether I should include my commentary and somewhat cynical notes in this blog, not at all, or start a secondary blog in which I post all that. Please give feedback in email or comment form, and, as always, keep on rockin' the redneck way, ya'll!
Note: I know they're kind of buried, but I do have two new posts right below this one, so scrolliing would be good right about now.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Redneck lawns
Speaking of lawns, let's talk about the sort of lawn your avrage redneck maintains.
The average redneck lets his property grow wild, except when that means that there's something in his way. Then he takes quick, decisive action to solve the problem.
Oftentimes, the problem is that to maintain the suburban grass that came with his house, the redneck will have to water it. A lot. Who needs that?
"Normal" Solution: Water a lot, stress about grass, replant yearly.
Redneck Solution: Don't water it and hope something local moves in.
Effort involved: none.
Payoff: Lower water bill, wildflowers sometimes (for the missus), no maintenance.
Drawback: Neighbors complain (solution: ignore them)
Another issue is that the local grass, such as crabgrass or the scrubgrass which likes to grow by the side of the highway, grows a lot, and if it gets too long, one can't stand barefoot in one's own front yard.
"Normal" Solution: Poison it and plant non-local grass, bust butt trying to make it grow, stress
Redneck Solution: Mow occasionally.
Effort involved: Low to moderate, unless one loves using the lawnmower, or can ride it (even a self-propelled push-mower is good for this)
Payoff: No cut feet
Drawback: Must mow
Suppose you own a larger chunk of property, and just letting it grow wild won't do. For example, you want to turn the field into a dirtbike park.
"Normal" Solution: Spend much money excavating, bringing in soil, getting rid of soil, stress over maintenance
Redneck Solution: Ride dirtbike on it until it gets the hint
Effort involved: None, you just get to ride a bike
Payoff: Dirtbike park, no cost
Drawback: No large jumps
Suppose you own a larger chunk of property, and don't want to mow it all, but don't want the scrub to get thick.
"Normal" Solution: Expensive landscape work
Redneck Solution: Apply gasoline and burn occasionally
Effort involved: Minimal when done often enough, must dig firebreak at edge of burn
Payoff: Fire. Rich local grass, no scrub, no mowing
Drawback: Fire. Can get out of hand. Yuppie neighbors that just bought farm next door call county fire department.
Suppose you own more motor vehicles than you have garage space for.
"Normal" Solution: Sell some.
Redneck Solution: Park on lawn.
Effort involved: None
Payoff: Can keep vehicles, hold paintball/airsoft in yard if large enough and not attached enough to vehicles to keep non-technicolor
Drawback: Neighbors tend to complain. Dunno why.
If you have a lot of trees on your property, especially large fruit trees and at least one hardwood, you have a lot of trimmings, fallings, and fruit.
"Normal" Solution: Eat fruit, let much rot, throw away wood
Redneck Solution: Eat fruit, throw parties and give away fruit on good years, Make preserves. Let wood lay around and decorate the place as it ages, when properly seasoned, use as fuel for cookfire. Use large branches from occasional major trimmings to decorate, make items to sell.
Effort involved: None, unless you make preserves or dislike using chainsaws every five or so years
Payoff: More firewood than you can burn, delicious food
Drawback: Crapload of wood, fruit, tough to use at proper pace to avoid large woodpiles
The average redneck lets his property grow wild, except when that means that there's something in his way. Then he takes quick, decisive action to solve the problem.
Oftentimes, the problem is that to maintain the suburban grass that came with his house, the redneck will have to water it. A lot. Who needs that?
"Normal" Solution: Water a lot, stress about grass, replant yearly.
Redneck Solution: Don't water it and hope something local moves in.
Effort involved: none.
Payoff: Lower water bill, wildflowers sometimes (for the missus), no maintenance.
Drawback: Neighbors complain (solution: ignore them)
Another issue is that the local grass, such as crabgrass or the scrubgrass which likes to grow by the side of the highway, grows a lot, and if it gets too long, one can't stand barefoot in one's own front yard.
"Normal" Solution: Poison it and plant non-local grass, bust butt trying to make it grow, stress
Redneck Solution: Mow occasionally.
Effort involved: Low to moderate, unless one loves using the lawnmower, or can ride it (even a self-propelled push-mower is good for this)
Payoff: No cut feet
Drawback: Must mow
Suppose you own a larger chunk of property, and just letting it grow wild won't do. For example, you want to turn the field into a dirtbike park.
"Normal" Solution: Spend much money excavating, bringing in soil, getting rid of soil, stress over maintenance
Redneck Solution: Ride dirtbike on it until it gets the hint
Effort involved: None, you just get to ride a bike
Payoff: Dirtbike park, no cost
Drawback: No large jumps
Suppose you own a larger chunk of property, and don't want to mow it all, but don't want the scrub to get thick.
"Normal" Solution: Expensive landscape work
Redneck Solution: Apply gasoline and burn occasionally
Effort involved: Minimal when done often enough, must dig firebreak at edge of burn
Payoff: Fire. Rich local grass, no scrub, no mowing
Drawback: Fire. Can get out of hand. Yuppie neighbors that just bought farm next door call county fire department.
Suppose you own more motor vehicles than you have garage space for.
"Normal" Solution: Sell some.
Redneck Solution: Park on lawn.
Effort involved: None
Payoff: Can keep vehicles, hold paintball/airsoft in yard if large enough and not attached enough to vehicles to keep non-technicolor
Drawback: Neighbors tend to complain. Dunno why.
If you have a lot of trees on your property, especially large fruit trees and at least one hardwood, you have a lot of trimmings, fallings, and fruit.
"Normal" Solution: Eat fruit, let much rot, throw away wood
Redneck Solution: Eat fruit, throw parties and give away fruit on good years, Make preserves. Let wood lay around and decorate the place as it ages, when properly seasoned, use as fuel for cookfire. Use large branches from occasional major trimmings to decorate, make items to sell.
Effort involved: None, unless you make preserves or dislike using chainsaws every five or so years
Payoff: More firewood than you can burn, delicious food
Drawback: Crapload of wood, fruit, tough to use at proper pace to avoid large woodpiles
'Tis the Season
That's right! It is spring, and we all know what that means. You guessed it, dusting off the old lawnmower and cutting that there grass. This is, of course, if you happen to live in the city, where you can't do the normal redneck thing and burn your grass first thing in the spring like we do way out in the sticks. It helps it grow real fertile, but I'm pretty sure the neighbors wouldn't be too crazy about it.
Is it really true that out of all our modern technology, the best tool for troubleshooting a squirrely lawnmower is to poke it with a stick? Apparently. We had a lawnmower that we got used out of a large-item-pickup pile that just needed a little tweaking and it ran fine for over a decade. It might have taken a little bit of effort to get it to turn over in the spring, but it worked every time. Finally, a couple of years ago, it died once more, and rather than re-gap the plugs (that was the issue), we decided to buy one of them newfangled bagger models so we didn't have to rake all the clippings. Craftsman. Tools of champions, right? Not so much.
The first thing it did was shake to spark plug wire clean off, right out of the box. With that fixed, it gave us a year and a half of faithful service. This year, nada. Zip. Major air intake and fuel delivery issues, all made worse by a malfunctioning governor.
We decided to elect a new one.
After a combined fifty years of mechanical knowledge examined and troubleshooted the critter, we came to the studied conclusion that we need to call Craftsman. We've never messed with a centrifugal governor before. But that's not my point. Unless I get a redneck on the other end of the line when I call, that doesn't matter. What matters is the way we troubleshot it.
When priming and pulling didn't work, I let it rest to let any fuel evaporate out of the chamber, and repeated. Still nothing. Gas tank's just been filled. Oil tank's dry. Close examination discloses a gas spot and an oil spot right where the mower sat in the shed. No tools used yet.
With the oil tank topped off with straight 30-weight, she's all lubed and runs for a few seconds and quits. Maybe it's a fuel delivery issue-- gas turns to goo in fuel lines, carbs, and anywhere where a gooey substance can pobbily cause you sorrow over even a few months. But it wasn't an issue for a decade... so maybe it's the air side of things. That one's easy.
You take off the filter cover, check the filter. It's almost solid mud. Good lord, how'd this thing ever run? You've got a garage full of mechanic's tools. How do you clean it? A stick. It gets in between the filter pleats better than a finger, and a few solid whacks get all the dust out that'll move. While the filter's off, you notice an odd lever, caked in... you guessed it, mud. How do you clean it? Same stick. Scrapes the mud off just fine. At this point, you get some twine to tie the safety, put the air cleaner back on, prime, and pull. It runs for a few seconds, then quits. You try again, this time holding the lever you noticed earlier fully open with... you guessed it: a stick. This doesn't solve your issue, but it helps smooth the rough idle a little. You toggle the lever again, and decide that must be the lever working the governor, which is that dohickey you've never thought about before on top of you carb. Motor vehicles don't have governors.
You're stumped. You decide to stare at it and see what it does as the motor idles rough and dies again. Turns out it is fluctuating wildly, and pulling shut at the wrong time. AHA! Now you need to hold it open and see if that fixes things. If so, you've found your problem. You have a very specialized tool to control the position of the lever in question: a stick. Poking it with a stick reveals that while it's part of your problem, it's not the main problem.
Total times that you've used a stick as a tool: at least four distinct tasks, multiple times.
Total times that a stick wasn't the best tool for the job: 0
Apparently, when troubleshooting a machine such as a lawnmower, a stick really is still the best tool for the job.
Problem: Fuel delivery, air (new filter needed), governor.
Solution: Poke it with a stick until it works or you know what you need to take apart.
Is it really true that out of all our modern technology, the best tool for troubleshooting a squirrely lawnmower is to poke it with a stick? Apparently. We had a lawnmower that we got used out of a large-item-pickup pile that just needed a little tweaking and it ran fine for over a decade. It might have taken a little bit of effort to get it to turn over in the spring, but it worked every time. Finally, a couple of years ago, it died once more, and rather than re-gap the plugs (that was the issue), we decided to buy one of them newfangled bagger models so we didn't have to rake all the clippings. Craftsman. Tools of champions, right? Not so much.
The first thing it did was shake to spark plug wire clean off, right out of the box. With that fixed, it gave us a year and a half of faithful service. This year, nada. Zip. Major air intake and fuel delivery issues, all made worse by a malfunctioning governor.
We decided to elect a new one.
After a combined fifty years of mechanical knowledge examined and troubleshooted the critter, we came to the studied conclusion that we need to call Craftsman. We've never messed with a centrifugal governor before. But that's not my point. Unless I get a redneck on the other end of the line when I call, that doesn't matter. What matters is the way we troubleshot it.
When priming and pulling didn't work, I let it rest to let any fuel evaporate out of the chamber, and repeated. Still nothing. Gas tank's just been filled. Oil tank's dry. Close examination discloses a gas spot and an oil spot right where the mower sat in the shed. No tools used yet.
With the oil tank topped off with straight 30-weight, she's all lubed and runs for a few seconds and quits. Maybe it's a fuel delivery issue-- gas turns to goo in fuel lines, carbs, and anywhere where a gooey substance can pobbily cause you sorrow over even a few months. But it wasn't an issue for a decade... so maybe it's the air side of things. That one's easy.
You take off the filter cover, check the filter. It's almost solid mud. Good lord, how'd this thing ever run? You've got a garage full of mechanic's tools. How do you clean it? A stick. It gets in between the filter pleats better than a finger, and a few solid whacks get all the dust out that'll move. While the filter's off, you notice an odd lever, caked in... you guessed it, mud. How do you clean it? Same stick. Scrapes the mud off just fine. At this point, you get some twine to tie the safety, put the air cleaner back on, prime, and pull. It runs for a few seconds, then quits. You try again, this time holding the lever you noticed earlier fully open with... you guessed it: a stick. This doesn't solve your issue, but it helps smooth the rough idle a little. You toggle the lever again, and decide that must be the lever working the governor, which is that dohickey you've never thought about before on top of you carb. Motor vehicles don't have governors.
You're stumped. You decide to stare at it and see what it does as the motor idles rough and dies again. Turns out it is fluctuating wildly, and pulling shut at the wrong time. AHA! Now you need to hold it open and see if that fixes things. If so, you've found your problem. You have a very specialized tool to control the position of the lever in question: a stick. Poking it with a stick reveals that while it's part of your problem, it's not the main problem.
Total times that you've used a stick as a tool: at least four distinct tasks, multiple times.
Total times that a stick wasn't the best tool for the job: 0
Apparently, when troubleshooting a machine such as a lawnmower, a stick really is still the best tool for the job.
Problem: Fuel delivery, air (new filter needed), governor.
Solution: Poke it with a stick until it works or you know what you need to take apart.
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