While we were sitting around Thursday with no electricity, Farmer H got a call from The Veteran, who had a bunch of trees down in his back yard. He said they were watching TV, and heard the storm. He immediately put his shoes on, which he always does during a storm. He told his wife and girls to go to the basement. Then heard the trees crashing. One pulled up, roots and all. Thank the Gummi Mary, they fell away from the house.
Anyhoo... The Veteran asked if Farmer H needed any help. Nope. The electric company crew was fixing the tree that was causing our problem. The Veteran was on his way to his mom's house, to get a tree off the roof. I'm assuming it was just a branch or two, since he didn't mention any structural problems.
Anyhoo... Farmer H said he was trying to find something to do. Like maybe work on our generator that he'd been neglecting for six months. Having last said that he needed to rebuild the carburetor to make it keep running. His excuse was that he never got the kit to rebuild the carburetor. So I don't know how he could work on it right then, if he didn't have the kit. Anyhoo, he said he was going to plug it in and charge the battery so he could try it. Oh, and he also said he might go out and mow the yard.
Once he hung up, I questioned his activities.
"Well, I don't have the kit, but I can look at it again and see if I can get it working."
"There's no way you can mow grass! With all this rain? The blade will just comb it. And you'll probably get the tires stuck in the mud."
"Yeah. Maybe you're right. I can wait until the yard dries out a little. I'm going out to charge the generator battery."
I was on my way to change clothes and go to town. I don't really pay attention to what Farmer H is doing around the grounds. I mainly just need to know if I should lock the door when I leave.
When I came back from changing, Farmer H was in the house again.
"Huh. You decided not to work on the generator?"
"I plugged it in, and then I realized we don't have electricity! So that idea's out."
Heh, heh. Sometimes Farmer H is not the sharpest tool in the themed shed.
4 comments:
I was confused for a minute there, thinking maybe you suddenly had electricity or was Farmer H going to plug the generator into a battery.
If I ever have a house again I will get a generator that runs on diesel, so I can have power when the electricity goes out.
River,
Farmer H has an actual battery-charger, I think. A contraption that he wheels around to try and start assorted motor-operated equipment. But it also needs to be charged, and it's not something you leave plugged in indefinitely. So I'm sure it was also unable to provide power.
The kind of generator that automatically kicks on when power goes out can run on natural gas, but since we're not in town, we don't have a line out here. The other option is a propane tank. The price of propane is pretty high, and it won't get used unless the power goes off. But it would be in a big tank like homes use for heating, and it doesn't go bad. Of course, I will think of it as a bomb waiting for an opportunity to kill me!
Our little gas generator was a bit awkward, but it did a good job of keeping us entertained and fed when the electricity went out. It had to be pulled out of the garage because it runs on gasoline and gives off carbon monoxide. Also, Farmer H and Genius had to keep checking it in case it ran out of gas. Farmer H had to drive to town in snow to get several cans of gas to have on hand. When power is out in the whole county, the gas pumps don't work. So it wasn't an easy fix, and he sometimes had to travel farther to get gas.
I knew how this was going to end from the beginning. So familiar.
Kathy,
The longer Farmer H avoids fixing that generator, the more likely he is to convince me that we need the automatic version. I'm pretty sure that's his tactic.
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