Wednesday, August 7, 2019

I Stumped Ol' Stumpy!

Mrs. HM is a freakin' genius! Or at least a semi-proficient researcher.

Tuesday, I was walking back to T-Hoe with the lone piece of mail in my hand, when I saw something in the middle of the road. Pretty much the exact middle, where the stripes would be painted if our county blacktop road had a center line. I bent over to pick it up.

Huh. It was heavy! What in the Not-Heaven? Was it a magnet? Stuff was stuck on the back of it. Maybe it was part of the latch on EmBee. It's been broken for a while. But it's a round magnet, and a rectangular piece of metal to stick to. That piece of metal, last I saw, was in the butt-end of EmBee.

I picked up that intriguing piece of roadsam, to bring back to the Mansion and ask Farmer H. After soaking in water and Dawn dish detergent for a few hours, I scrubbed it as clean as I could. I took it to Farmer H.

"Look what I found in the road down by the mailboxes. Is it part of our magnet?"

"No. That's no magnet."

"It's really heavy. Do you think it's lead?"

"Yeah. That's lead."

"I got it as clean as I could. Is there anything else you can think of that will clean it up? Make it shiny? Does vinegar interact with lead?"

"I don't think it would hurt it, but it might turn it black."

"Yeah. It's clean enough. I'm not really going to do anything with it. It says 1/2 OZ FE. I think it's heavier than a half-ounce. Maybe it means it's one 2-ounce piece. And FE means iron. Do you think it's iron?"

"It's lead. It feels like 1/2 ounce to me."

"I wonder what it's for? A little scale, maybe? Do you think a drug dealer was using it to measure out his dealings?"

"It's possible. Like a little postage scale, maybe. They use those."

"Huh. Well. I'm taking it downstairs to my office."

Here's the object, all prettied up and posed on top of a Pepcid lid:

The back has no writing. It was kind of gunky with black stuff and road dust, so I had to scrub it with my fingernail, even after soaking. There's no writing on the back. It's 1 inch long, and 1/2 inch wide, and 1/4 inch thick. The base is a little wider than the top, though you can't tell it by this picture.


There it is, on end. I did a little research on the innernets. Looks like Farmer H doesn't know what he's talking about. He can go around, stumping on his footless ankles (from the sound of him walking above my head while I'm in my dark basement lair), all puffed-up in the knowledge that his knowledge is the most knowledgeable knowledge ever acknowledged... but I know he's WRONG! On this one, anyway.

My little metal lozenge is neither lead nor part of a scale.

It's a wheel weight used to balance tires. It's iron. Some of them have a little flap that gets hooked on a tire rim, and others come with adhesive backs. I guess this had the adhesive, and fell off a tire. That would be the gummy part I scrubbed off.

You'd think Farmer H, the gearhead, would know about a weight used for balancing tires!

Now I wonder what else he's told me over the years that isn't accurate.

4 comments:

Sioux Roslawski said...

Yes, I wonder the same. Yes indeed--what other wool is Farmer H trying to pull over your eyes?

(Monday school starts. As you loll in bed until midmorning on that day, think of me...)

Hillbilly Mom said...

Sioux,
He tried to pull that wool so hard that I felt like Bazooka Joe's sweater friend Mort!

I HAVE been thinking about you, every time I see the supply lists in The Devil's Playground, and look at the date on New Delly or my checkbook. This is the time my mom would be saying, "It won't be long until you're back in school!" Actually, she'd start that around July 5. One year I had to ban her from using the word SCHOOL until I was already back to work.

Yes, I will be thinking of you in meetings that prevent you from getting your room ready. Staying late for open house. Wondering if a cafeteria worker will single you out to get the beaks off the tray of chicken nuggets...

Not that they would! But one of my colleagues made a cook mad by giving her daughter less than an A. Every time he went through the line, she'd turn and get HIS food off a metal tray with just a few burnt items left on it.

River said...

You should check all your tyres and make sure the weight didn't come off one of your cars. If it didn't, then just keep is as a paperweight. You're going to find yourself researching every little thing Farmer H tells you for quite a while. Until you forget.

Hillbilly Mom said...

River,
I don't know if our cars had those weights. All I know is that when we get new tires, the crew balances them so they don't wobble. I've always been happily oblivious to how it works!

I've always been a little suspicious of Farmer H's proclamations, but one thing I consider him an expert in is CARS! I'm almost disappointed. But then he did what's in the next post...