A long time ago, my granddaddy called me to help crank the lawnmower. He said, “Son, I have pulled and pulled and it just will not start”. Needless to say I started pulling and pulling and it would not crank. Now, I was maybe 12 or 13 at the time and pretty stubborn, I was not going to let this get the best of me. So I began questioning my Granddaddy…
Me: Is there gas in the tank?
Him: Yes.
Me: Are you sure?
Him: blank stare….
Me: Maybe it’s flooded out.
Him: No it’s not.
Me: Let me try again..
Him: It won’t work..
Me: Any suggestions?
Him: Go get the sheet.
Now the sheet was used anytime a major project was about to occur. It was white and greasy and smelled….bad.
I knew we were about to tear this mower apart, and we did, piece by piece.
He told me what each piece was about and how it functioned. After a while we had EVERY piece disassembled, laying on that sheet. He looked at me and ask me what I thought?
What I wanted to say was, “buy a new mower, cause this thing is NOT going back together!” All I could say was “I have no idea”! Everything looked good, nothing was broken then I heard those words from him…”put it back together”.
Me?
Him: Yep, just like we took it a part.
After a while…a long while, I had it back together.
He said, “try to start it”!
Me: But we didn’t fix it!
So I pulled and pulled to no avail. It was not going to start.
Then my grandfather said, “try this, (he reaches down and puts the spark plug wire on the plug)
“try it now”
I reach down pull the rope and it starts right up!
I’m thinking: “Really”? A wire is all it was? You could have fixed that before we tore this thing apart!
Truth is there was a lot of time spent together and I walked away with know every part of a mower.
Even better…got a precious memory of time with my Granddaddy.
Make a memory this weekend!
Jerry Elder 