Not another Friday 13th!
December 13, 2013
The second Friday in September this year was really bad, and I have memories of quite a few unfortunate Friday 13ths with which to compare it. So this time I vowed to be especially careful and to avoid all contact with machinery until the day was over or I had accumulated three catastrophes from other sources.
Bad things travel in threes for me on Friday 13th.
So I cowered inside on a beautiful day and waited. Not much was happening. Took the dog for a run in the woods and we came back chilled, but intact. Then I noticed the truck tracks in the driveway. Gas delivery. No problem.
My mother asked me to check the calculations of her propane bill. O.K., disaster #1 for the day. Propane has gone from 57 cents per litre to 75.9 in the year since I installed the furnace.
Speaking of furnaces, Bet checked the oil level in ours and quickly called the fuel company. Apparently they had forgotten about us, and the tank was below 25%. Disaster #2.
An online payment froze up when I pressed “Send” on Paypal. Disaster #3. O.K., I’m set now.
But then I received an email receipt for the payment. Oops… back to waiting for #3 and watching sitcoms. In bed.
Got up to go the the washroom and somehow, I don’t know how, managed to drop my cell phone into the W.C. I immediately rescued the little LG and dried it off while it cycled through its on/off routine. Then it uttered a sad little bleep and died. None of our efforts to revive it produced any reaction. It had shorted out.
That’s my only phone. We don’t have a land line. So now I have to find a replacement for it. That’s about standard for me on Friday the 13th.
Friday the 13th
September 13, 2013
At this point it’s almost ten a.m., and I have retreated to my bed to hide for the remainder of the day. Any reasonable man would do the same. Terrible things happen to me on Friday the 13th and they usually travel in threes.
First, I should have suspected something was up when a wasp dropped from the plastic roof of my shed onto my shirt collar at 4:00 a.m. and stung me while I was walking the dog.
This morning a guy came for a second look at a piece of machinery I have advertised. His father approved; the mechanism worked perfectly. It should have been a sale, but just before he had left to come to our appointment someone had offered him (free of charge) another machine which would also move his sawdust and he felt he should look at that one first. He’d get back to me. Fine, no problem. Needless to say, he soon called back to tell me that he had chosen the free one.
So I decided I should oil the mechanism on the manure spreader. Its apron is a pair of chains driven by cogged wheels which roll above and below the wooden bed of the trailer. Cross pieces join the chains and enable the mechanism to unload its cargo. To oil the chain I planned to extract a couple of litres of used engine oil from the collector in the garage, an 18 gallon tank on wheels with a large funnel on top which wheels under a car on a hoist for oil changes. It also boasts a connection and a series of valves to allow the use of an air compressor to force the oil out of the tank and presumably into a waiting container.
Twice I have performed this function involving adding air to the tank while directing the resulting stream of oil into a five-gallon pail via a siphon hose which otherwise sits draped over the edge of the funnel. Today I discovered how big a mess ten gallons of old oil hooked to an air compressor can make in a garage if anything goes wrong.
I blamed myself and cleaned the mess up as well as I could.
The third disaster occurred when I returned to the spreader, started the tractor and the PTO, and carefully dripped oil from a gallon container onto the chains, taking great care to avoid the dangerous turning shafts. The track broke.
A cotter pin holding a cogged idler on the right front corner had failed, allowing the gear to slide off, causing the chain to …. I shut the tractor off before things got worse, leaving me with a bent bolt to repair and a complex apron mechanism to readjust.
This should not have happened.
Then I thought of the date. Damn! Friday the 13th.
So instead of fixing the mechanism I retreated to my computer, hoping against hope that the third disaster of the day wouldn’t involve something indispensable like my laptop. (I’d been too sleepy at 4:00 a.m. to attach any significance to a random wasp sting, so I cowered around all morning until I realized that this Friday the 13th had probably completed its mischief for the day.)
Lessons from another Friday 13th
January 13, 2012
If you have read many of these posts you will be aware of my deep antipathy toward Friday 13th. It’s not that I am normally superstitious, but too many bizarre and horrible things have happened to me on the date. So I go into each of these days with considerable apprehension and a marked reluctance to take chances, not that it does any good.
It all started on Friday, April 13, 1971 when I wrote two final examinations at Queen’s. My Shakespeare prof had warned us: “Be sure that you have read all of the plays.” She wasn’t kidding; she had set a compulsory 45 mark question on three plays I hadn’t read.
The craziest episode had to be the time a neighbour’s 1986 Ford Bronco slipped out of park, rolled down Church Street in Smiths Falls, through the George Street intersection, and sideswiped my unsuspecting 4Runner before wrapping itself around a pole. This all happened during my morning shower on another Friday 13th. What’s even stranger, the insurance underwriter classified the accident as an animal collision as there was a Bronco involved.
So today when it dropped six inches of slush on top of an inch of new ice, I figured it was just business as usual for a Friday 13th. My tractor normally does a good job on snow with its loader. I set the bucket to automatic leveler and run down the lane at a good pace, cross the road and stop over the opposing ditch, where I dump the snow and back down the hill to turn around and return for another run.
But the paved road on Young’s Hill was far too slippery for such antics today. I ran out of momentum or stopped early out of caution most runs, leaving mountains of slush blocking the lane. The one time I went over to the opposing ditch I had no traction to back out, so was forced to lever the tractor backwards with the loader while three trucks waited impatiently for me to get out of the way. This was obviously not the way to clean the driveway on a Friday the 13th, so I spent the afternoon developing new tactics to do a ten-minute job. My timid efforts with the tractor eventually relocated the slush mountains without catastrophe. Fine.
Then came the little snow blower for detail work around the garages and sidewalks. It wouldn’t start. I dumped the gas and poured in new, but it still wouldn’t go. But that was a result of forgotten fuel stabilizer, not the act of a perverse fate.
So I backed my truck out through a snowbank and drove down to Forfar to get the mail. The faint rattle in the front suspension had suddenly become a lot more noticeable. Perhaps I should have a look. I dropped a piece of plywood on the ground and crawled under. I started at the gas tank and worked forward. Everything seemed solid. The shocks and ball joints were fine. Then something moved when I reached past the shocks and wiggled.
The brake caliper I replaced three weeks ago had come loose and was hanging by one bolt! Yikes! Perhaps those bolts don’t need to be protected with anti-seize compound like wheel nuts and spark plugs. Maybe it’s Lock-Tite that goes on them. Maybe I didn’t tighten them enough. Anyway, this bizarre and dangerous fail met all of the criteria of a Friday 13th disaster, so I was able to relax for the rest of the day. My truck certainly wasn’t going anywhere without a new bolt.
Out of Friday’s confusion I have learned three lessons:
1. Modern gasoline with its high methanol content deteriorates quickly if left sitting in an engine. When I took the snowblower’s carburetor apart, internal parts were crusted with a green, crystalline material unlike anything I had seen before. It’s not like the ring of varnish which used to form around abandoned gas cans. Without stabilizer I can’t see a small gas engine surviving long in storage if there’s any fuel left in it.
2. It takes more than a hoist and set of air wrenches to make a mechanic. Those caliper bolts needed to be torqued to 90 foot-pounds. We have to get Internet service in the garage.
3. My tractor’s two previous owners traded it in at the same dealership on the same 4WD model. After last Friday that doesn’t seem like a bad idea.
Also check out:
https://rodcroskery.wordpress.com/2009/02/15/the-mysterious-case-of-the-runaway-bronco/
The Mysterious Case of the Runaway Bronco
February 15, 2009
I dread Friday the 13th. I have done so ever since April, 1971, when on a Shakespeare exam at Queen’s I faced a compulsory 45 mark question on three plays I hadn’t read. Then I reeled into a Canadian history exam and had forgotten pretty well everything by the fifth hour of the six-hour ordeal.
It’s not that I’m overly superstitious. No, my fear of Friday the 13th comes as the result of a lifelong series of catastrophes on that day, many of which have had a built-in ironic component which makes my head spin. The mysterious case of the runaway Bronco is a good example:
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I was in the shower, a bit late for the drive to school, when I heard a loud crash. Bet shouted, “Rod, somebody’s hit your truck!”
I stumbled outside. There was my poor 4Runner, huddled against the curb, one back wheel driven up onto the lawn. The left side had been creased and scratched and the mirror was nowhere to be found.
Just past my truck a Ford Bronco had wrapped itself around the hydro pole which grows at the edge of our driveway. Coolant gushed from the radiator and perfumed the air around the wreck. I checked the cab. No driver. What’s more, the interior of the truck was tidy, locked up, and with no keys in the ignition.
A Smiths Falls Police cruiser arrived. The officers looked as bewildered as I about the absent driver.
About this time a little guy strolled up the road from Quattrocchi’s vegetable warehouse, a block further down the hill. “I’d just got in with a load a’ potatoes from New Brunswick when I saw those poles and wires-a-dancing, so I left my truck to come up and see what’s happened.”
Constable Jim Ecker asked, “Sir, did you see the accident? Did you see anyone running away from the vehicle?”
“No, all I saw’s the wires, but they were really jumping around there for a bit.”
The stranger walked over to the wrecked SUV. “Say, now, that’s a 1986 Ford Bronco. I had one a’ them. Thing kept jumpin’outa park whenever I left ‘er parked on a hill. Finally it got away on me out front o’ my sister’s house and it rolled into a swamp and we never did find it again. Brand new tires on’er, too. I missed those tires.”
Constable Alison Smith piped up: “Sir, are you suggesting that this vehicle might have been parked up the street, and that it jumped out of park and rolled down the hill until it hit this pole?”
The man looked at the wrecked Bronco, looked up the street, considered the slopes, the distances, the angle of deflection off my Toyota, and nodded his head in the affirmative. “Yep.”
Constable Ecker ran the plate and discovered that the Bronco was registered to the pastor of his church. He called and interrupted the clergyman’s breakfast. He promised to come right over, and soon parked his Crown Victoria behind my stricken 4Runner.
“I lent the Bronco to my daughter to use while her husband is out of town. They live in an apartment up the hill,” gesturing up Church Street towards the town hall.
“What’s her name and phone number, Reverend?” Smith asked.
“Would you mind not calling her? She worked the night shift and is probably just getting to sleep now. Why don’t I call my insurance company and the tow-truck and we let her sleep?”
The officers decided that this would be all right, so a genial and very knowledgeable tow truck owner soon arrived and separated the Bronco from its splintered adversary.
It fell to me to notify my insurance company of the accident. The local answering machine referred me to another in Kingston, into which I dictated my message.
“Dear Sir, Madam, or machine: This morning at approximately 7:30 a ten year-old Bronco got away from its owner and ran down the street, plunged through an intersection, sideswiped my 4Runner and killed itself on the hydro pole in my driveway.”
I left my contact numbers and soon a smart and very competent woman called to guide me through procedures. The repairs were soon done to my satisfaction, the rental Ford went back, and I thought I had heard the last of the matter.
Then, three months later, a letter arrived from the insurance company:
“Dear Mr. Croskery re: Animal Collision, April 13, 1997. We hope that you have found the repairs to your vehicle satisfactory…”
Animal collision??? This left me in a quandary. The nice lady on the phone couldn’t possibly have mistaken a 1986 Bronco for a horse. So was she joking? I couldn’t tell, and worse, I didn’t know how to respond. Do I clear up her “misconception” and make myself the butt of the joke, or do I let it go? Torn by indecision, I finally wimped out and said that everything was fine. Maybe that gave her the best laugh of all.
When I told the guys at the Marina about this, my Newfoundland friend Les said that he had the same thing happen when he hit a moose with his Blazer. About three months later a letter came, this one about a “collision with a flying object.”
“Well, that moose was a’flyin after I ran into ‘er, but maybe they’d used up all the animal collisions in Ontario and gave us what was left over.”
the Walnut Diary 