In search of the lost cord

Part I: Rude awakening

I woke up from a sound sleep ready to start something on a glorious sunny Saturday morning. The new rec center, strategically located close to both home and work, has an adult open gym for basketball on Saturday mornings, and I've been itching to bounce around the hardwood. So I put on my Chucks, and on the way I clocked the distance for future bike rides, about five miles.

When I pulled into the parking lot, a couple of young guys, wearing sweats and carrying bags, were getting out of a car. Define young: I'm guessing a couple of years out of college, clean-cut frat men with jobs, living in the suburbs and ready to play on the weekend.

In the gym, a full-court game is in progress, so I watch and I like what I see: people who run the floor, play defense, rebound, and actually pass the ball, and I don't like what I see: pumped-up guys too quick for me to finesse and too strong for me to stop. Half of them are playing the kind of up-tempo game I last played in 1975, and the other half are about my speed, mismatched and not keeping up. It's a reality check: Saturday morning roundball is not going to happen. It's time to check out the Monday afternoon 50+ open gym.

I took a different way home that I've never driven before and found out how Worthmore Road connects with Cuyahoga Avenue. While I was out, since it's such a nice day, I figured I would fix my flat, so I went to the bike shop on Schocking Road and bought a new tire for the Schwinn. The old one "lost its bead" and wouldn't contain an inflated tube. I'm not sure how that works as a metaphor, but there it is: old tires eventually go bad. I had a good conversation with the man at the bike shop in overalls and a soul-patch, and he had lots of information about trails cross-crossing Swingstate and our neighboring Mountainstate.

Part II: You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours

I put the new tire and the old tube on the rim and went to put air in it, but the "free air" hose was out of order at four different gas stations along State Street. What is this, an epidemic? However, on the way I passed Big Mike and his crew, barrel-chested guys with ropes and saws, taking down a tree in a front yard on Walnut Street, so I rolled down the window and asked if the wood was spoken for. "Take as much as you want, but it's gotta be gone by Sunday."

I did the rest of my chores and came back late in the afternoon when they were done for the day. Just to be sure, I knocked on the door of the big brick house with wrought-iron window boxes and asked the young mother in the Virginia sweatshirt if the wood was available. She said fine, take all you want, and we chatted. She walks her five-year-old past our little brick house around the corner on their way to school every morning, and it's taking them as long to renovate their 1880s house as it is us. I loaded all the small stuff I could lift. Big Mike just happened to drive by and said he'd cut up the big pieces if I'd haul them away, I said when, he said tomorrow morning, I said what time, he said 8:30, I said I'll be there.

Sunday morning was clear and crisp, and Mike was true to his word. With his big chainsaw, my little truck, his sidekick and me loading, we removed all of the 110-year-old catalpa. I paced it off: 15 feet around at the base. It took four trips in the 3/4 ton Ranger; do the math, that's three tons of firewood drying out in the back yard of Om Shanty awaiting my splitting maul. I figure about two cords, which ought to get us through next winter.

Part III: On a roll

Backing up to the gate to unload wood caused me to look more closely at the hinges that have been coming loose for several months. Maybe I don't have to replace them after all. It's the screws that are too short, not the hinges themselves, so I rummaged through the pint jar of old screws on a shelf in the garage and found half a dozen that are twice as long as the shorties that came with Home Despot's el cheapo hinges. Once the longer screws were in the propped-up gate, they reached through the boards and 2x4 into the post and kept the gate from sagging. This would have been obvious the first time to a skilled handyman, but it was a minor triumph for the mechanically challenged.

As I was putting away the screws and screwdriver, I was confronted by the broken garage-door spring that's been hanging loose for a week. The door continued to work with only one spring, but I didn't want to press my luck. Looking closely at the good spring revealed how it connected to the garage frame on one end (big screw-hook) and the track the door rolls up and down on the other end (little S-hook on a cable). With the door open and the spring slack, it was a simple matter to slide the broken coils onto the intact end of the spring, hook that on the screw-hook, and loop the cable onto the S-hook. Voila!

Was it the full moon making its way around the globe to shine its brilliant reflected light on central Swingstate, or just a burst of creative problem-solving energy released in my obtuse brain by a morning of manual labor? Whatever it was, the forces were with me, and the improvised garage door worked, just as the improvised gate hinges worked, and the impromptu barter of labor for firewood worked. After a large lunch and a long, slow stretch to heal my aching sacro-iliac joint, I even found a gas station with an air hose that worked.