The Combusted Engine

There are quite a few things in this world that I don’t understand. A fair number of those things I don’t ever have to trouble myself with. Like how to coexist with spiders that are bigger than my hand. Certain people, such as Australians, have figured this out, and good for them for doing that, but I am just going to sidestep the issue by living in a climate that barely permits human habitation, let alone nefarious arachnids.

However, on the Venn diagram of “Things That I Don’t Understand” and “Things That I Have to Deal With”, smack in the middle of the overlap is “Motorized Vehicles”.

Lawnmowers, snowmobiles, cars, and tractors.

But wait, there’s more. Let’s add another circle to that Venn diagram:

“Things That Blow Up/Start On Fire”.

This circle isn’t just for things that might blow up or start on fire. It is also for things that I have experienced doing those things. As far as I’m concerned, anything that has any contact with a flammable substance, has air pressure, or uses electricity runs the risk of blowing up/catching fire. My limited experiences with these things happening have only confirmed these fears.

I have a childhood memory of the lawnmower starting on fire. Since I have no idea what made it start on fire, in my mind it spontaneously combusted. Oldest Brother might have more insight, as I believe he was fuelling it up at the time. That scenario may make you think, “A teenager pouring gas into an old lawnmower while it’s running doesn’t sound like a very spontaneous situation for a combustion”. I think you are probably on to something if you are thinking that, but as far as my childhood memory is concerned, if something wasn’t on fire, and one hadn’t intended for there to be a fire, and then there suddenly was a fire, that is the same as spontaneous combustion.

Anyway.

He managed to push it away from the fuel tank and toward the hydrant, except I can’t remember if that hydrant was there at the time or not. I would like to know if they tried using water to put it out, and how that went. I think if they had, and it went badly, my brain would have short-circuited as it moved water into the Venn diagram space of things that blow up. As I am not currently holding that view, I think they mustn’t have tried water. Anyway, Second Brother ran inside to get a fire extinguisher. I don’t know if Second Brother has ever experienced something more gratifying than finally having cause to pull the pin on a fire extinguisher and use it. I mean, just imagine...

You’re a teenage boy. The internet is something that rich people in big US cities have. You’re being homeschooled in the basement, and the bright red cylinder is hanging from a beam above you. Your dad has explained how to use it, but your older brother has had his ears verbally boxed for pulling the pin out of one once. The instructions on the side are a comic strip of temptation. Years of curiosity held back by paternal discipline, and finally, a moment of necessity...

He’s got two kids, now, but this one might still be in the running for most exciting event.

Anyway, they got the fire out and we all got to see a fire extinguisher in action, which was pretty cool.

The next inferno was not so many years ago, when Dad was attempting to fire up the Ski-Doo. He fired it up alright.

I’m pretty sure I went into elaborate details about this incident already, so I won’t carry on this time. Just as a recap, we were pouring gas very clumsily into the sparkplugs, trying to get it to start. About as much gas went beside the holes as into them, so after dozens of attempts, there was a good bit of fuel for the flame that fwoomped into life.

Have you ever heard a decent portion of gas catch fire? It goes fwoomp. I just wanted to explain that, because I don’t know if that is universally accepted onomatopoeia.

Anyway, we managed to put it out by suffocating it with snow. I was the bucket brigade for that incident, only I didn’t have a bucket, so I had to scoop as much snow as I could with my arms, precariously toddle into the low shed, and dump it on the engine. Dad was poking the snow into more relevant positions and encouraging haste from me. I don’t know if you know much about haste being verbally encouraged, but let me tell you, it has a tendency to be not that effective. Trust me: if there’s a fire, I promise I’m already in haste mode. Yelling things like “Hurry!” and “What’s taking so long?!” and “There’s a FIRE OVER HERE!” are not actually going to speed things up. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Most of that yelling was actually involved in the next incident...

We got the fire out and the Ski-Doo still works fine. The most lasting damage was done to my delicate psyche, as I now hold firmly to the belief that engines can start on fire at any time, an hypothesis only strengthened by even more recent events...

Now we move on to the third incendiary incident. We have graduated from small engines to a whole Buick LeSabre car. This is the worst incident of the three not only because of the higher value of material goods involved, but because people weren’t even pouring gasoline into holes at the time. That is bad news for me because up until now I have been able to reason, “Well as long as I’m not adding flammable gas to the flammable engine, I’ll be safe.” Now I am not safe. No one is safe.

Also, this one didn’t blow up OR catch fire, it blew up AND caught fire.

So here’s how it went down...

Sister’s car didn’t like the 3-week cold snap we had back in December. It was parked for a very long time and the battery froze, I believe. When we had to go to town one day, it didn’t start for her, so she put the battery charger on and we used a different car.

The next day, Dad came over to work in the shop on a different vehicle and help Sister sort out her car. I was not there for the first half portion of the incident, which was the blowing up portion. Dad and Sister went to the garage and she turned the key while Dad stood by to listen to the starter. I think the hood was open, but by some divine guidance, Dad was not standing right over the engine. When the plastic top of the manifold blew to bits, no one was hurt by the flying shrapnel.

At this time, I finished what I had been doing in the shop and came out to see how things were progressing with Sister’s car. The environment in the garage was a little tense. Dad was suggesting all the possible things Sister might have done to cause the explosion, and Sister was denying all charges.

I didn’t know at the time what they were talking about. I thought the engine had metaphorically blown up. Like if an engine “craps out”. That means it quits working. Not that it is incontinent. I thought they were just being dramatic about it crapping out. In hindsight, I can see why Sister was so tense.

But Dad is a curious fellow, both in that he is odd and in that if something he doesn’t understand happens, he likes to push the issue to greater lengths in the hopes that understanding will occur along the way. So, abandoning an ounce of caution, Dad told Sister to try starting the car again. She turned the key, and the old Buick roared to life, acting as though Sister had the accelerator pinned to the floor. To say I was afraid is nothing (I frequently experience fear over very minor things); but I think even Dad felt a twinge of fear. He started yelling and waving his arms at Sister to stop. When she turned the key off, the angry Buick noises subsided.

“Were you flooring it??!” Dad asked her.

“NO! I just turned it on!”

Dad did that face he makes when what you have suggested doesn’t fit in to his own surmise of how a situation just played out, but he has no way of proving that you’re delusional. It’s a very frowny frown, and then to effect even more wrinkles to the look, the head is jerked down and back, creating more chins if they are readily available. If there are spectacles involved, the target of this look will be peered at over the spectacles.

It’s an antagonizing expression, but perhaps hard for you to picture if you have not interacted with the men in my family. If I’m being completely honest (which I hate to be), when I try on the expression I have described, there is a certain familiarity it has with my face. I suspect I am guilty of having inflicted it upon another.

Anyway, after the car blowing up, and then accelerating in an unnatural and aggressive way, the obvious course of action, in Dad’s mind at least, was to try again.

He kept saying, “I can’t believe it even started?” Posing the statement as though it was a question cast out into the universe (it was just as well to cast it into the universe, because Sister and I were far less likely to come up with an explanation).

“Try starting it again; if it does that thing, turn it off right away,” Dad instructed, “...and don’t give it any gas.”

Sister did some stoney-faced muttering about how she didn’t press the gas the first time, but got behind the wheel and prepared to start it anyway.

The good news was, it didn’t do the aggressive acceleration.

The bad news was, it fwoomped into flame.

“Fire!” Dad yelled. “Shut it off! It’s on fire!”

Sister ran out and started grabbing armloads of snow. I cast around the dim garage and found, amongst the many pails and cans of flammable substance, an empty pail. Grabbing that and a grain shovel that was in the corner, I ran out to join the bucket brigade with an actual bucket this time. I gave Sister the shovel and we both brought loads of snow to pile onto the engine. Dad was attempting to shift and poke the snow into the flames, but there was a flame resting in one of the plastic shields on the bottom that he couldn’t get at. Sister was laying on the ground, attempting to get the shovel underneath to spray snow up at it. After a couple minutes of trying and failing to get the flame out, things quickly elevated to threat-level Armageddon. I was sent to the shop for a tow strap, and due to being hyper-focussed (that’s a nice way of saying obtuse), I started desperately searching for a particular polyester towing strap, and the pile of chains in the corner didn’t cross my mind until the yelled suggestion of, “What, there’s no chains in there??!?!?!?” crossed my ears. I added extra punctuation there to hint at the tone and pitch that was used.

Anyway, I got the chain to them, then pulled my truck up behind the car. Sister hooked it up and I pulled it out. My hyper-focus struck again, and since I now have the benefit of explaining myself without the interruption of the aforementioned Tone and Pitch, I will do so. I thought the endgame was just to pull the car out of the dry-wood, flammable-and-toxic-substance-filled, ancient garage that was right next door to the rather valuable shop. I did not realize the endgame was to pull the car to the hydrant and attempt to make the hose work for us in sub-30 weather.

So anyway, I backed straight up rather than turning and instead of informing me of their grand hydrant schemes, the Tone just got Tone-ier and the Pitch just got Pitch-ier, pelting me with information like, “There’s a fire!!” and “Why are you backing straight??” instead of maybe letting me in on the plan that had apparently been discussed between the two people that had made no move to jump into the towing truck.

Anyway, after that sixty-second detour we got it pulled to the hydrant, where Dad managed to get a hose screwed on just enough to become stuck. Then we had to get a torch and melt that one off while Sister went inside for a thawed hose.

After our handiwork in the sub-30 weather, the engine was well covered with a block of ice-encrusted snow. We figured the fire was probably out, but still left it sit outside, just in case.

Eventually, the toasty old Buick got pulled into the shop and fixed up. Sister sat in the attic making bank at her banking job while her father got paid considerably less to fix her car (and I handed him tools for even less pay than he was taking).

That is the end of my inferno-related topics, but on principal, I can’t post such a succinct block of writing, so allow me to flesh out a couple of the more recent goings on...

We’ve had a pretty good winter around here. Not too much water bowl trouble except in the very beginning, when the sole waterer where the cows would be wintered froze up. It didn’t just freeze up, either. On the evening before the cows were set to be moved there, I did a routine check and discovered it was a block of ice, float and all. Not a lick of power to it or the pump house that serviced it. In the dark of night, we got a generator running so the heat tape could begin thawing it. I don’t remember what else we did, as it was some time ago, but for a while, to get the cows through, we opened a drain hole in the bowl so that it would continuously flow out and therefor not freeze. Fortunately, an electrician was able to locate the break on the buried wire and repair it. That was back in early December, when our 3-week cold snap had just set in. It wasn’t a great way to kick off frozen-water-bowl season, but it turned out not to be a bad omen as we have made it through most of the rest of the season with no hiccups. That’s exactly the sort of perky, optimistic thing that gets said right before a water bowl throws all possible mischief at a person, so I probably shouldn’t have written it. However, by the time I actually upload this to public domain, we will probably be through to later spring. Hopefully bad karma won’t see through this loophole of mine.

Anyway, that was really just an elaborate lead up to telling you that, while the piping going to the cattle has been functioning well, some of the piping through them has not been behaving.

In the last four years, we have had one bull and three steer calves suffer with kidney stones. The first ones, a steer and bull, we didn’t realize what was wrong. The steer, unfortunately, died, but the bull slowly recovered. The next two years, we cottoned on a little quicker and took the unfortunate steers in to visit the vet. The vet gives them some sleepy juice and an epidural, then cuts a hole right under their tail, pulls out the urethra, cuts it off, and sews the relevant end into place. The irrelevant end is released back into the calf. I know not what becomes of it. The calves generally recover quickly, fatten well, and make for some excellent barbecues the following summer.

We had a respite from the kidney stones last year, but they made up for lost time this year when we had to take two into the vet a couple weeks apart. The first one we had put off taking in because he was eating well and was still able to dribble some urine out. We thought he might just have an infection. As a result, he needed some TLC to recover, and ended up spending some time in a trailer that was parked in the shop, which we kept warm with frequent fires. He is doing very well now, as is his fellow re-piped buddy. They are enjoying their short walks from a bedded barn to a bale of hay, to a pail of corn, to a bowl of water. They are currently penned with some home-raised bull calves we kept around; perhaps this shall affirm their tenuous hold on masculinity.

Aside from their future purpose of feeding friends and family, these calves are assisting in the training of Chip, the year-old Border Collie female of Dad’s. It has been fun to see Chip’s natural instinct come out, and watch how Dad can harness it with some commands. She’s a bold one, but keeps the calves nice and quiet by working in a sensible way.

Speaking of Border Collies and sensibility, let me talk about Ben for a bit, because Ben is a Border Collie, and Ben has no sensibility. This is not a shocking new development. Ben has lacked sensibility since... well since we ever knew him as an 8-week-old pup. As a puppy, he was a terror. We used to have a shoe shelf in our porch. Ben had us remove everything from the lowest shelf (after he removed it all himself and stole a few laces). Then from the next shelf up. Then we took the whole shelf away. He then chewed the trim and gnawed holes in the wall. We put cayenne pepper everywhere. Then he became obsessed with pawing the doorstop spring. He apparently delighted in the way it bounced and thrummed. It took him way past teething age to be safe around shoes, and even then, if left to his own devices, he could get whipped into a frenzy and have a room or vehicle torn asunder. When Dad got him back from the trainer, it was with the words, “If you can ever get through to him, he’ll probably be a good dog.” If that had truth in it, then I am not confident that Ben was ever gotten through to. The best I can say is that he sure could clear out a pen of cattle. Still can. He tends to confront cattle in a very head-on way, identifying one he’d like to make life tough for and diving in to chase it no matter which direction it goes. The onlooking cattle obviously don’t want to be on Ben’s radar, so things get moving pronto. He certainly has had his uses on sticky or stubborn cattle, but is best kept close at side where there are narrow gates or high-headed cattle. Ben has caused a few wires to squeak in his time.

Around the time that Ben was getting useful, or at least, his wild ways could be directed with disciplined commands, he noticed himself in a reflective surface. As with Narcissus, it was his downfall.

He became obsessed with every hint of movement on the side of the stove, the ceiling of the un-upholstered roof of the old chore truck, or the basement windows that were at the perfect height for him to stare at. But he didn’t stop there. Reflections were not readily available often enough, so Ben added to his madness by taking up the hobby of chasing shadows. I’ve seen plenty of Border Collies chase birds, but it’s a special sort of basket case that chases a bird’s shadow.

Ben became more and more distracted by the shadows; so much so that he couldn’t be counted on to effectively herd cattle on sunny days. He still had his cloudy-day uses, but we never quite knew what we were going to get when we sent him out to work. As a result of the frustrating inconsistency, as well as Dad buying new dogs, Ben came to live with me.

Ben has been a very good, low-maintenance dog to have around. He has only run home a few times, and his nocturnal barking is minimal. During cold snaps, he comes inside and confines himself the porch. He chases the cats away if I ask him to, but otherwise leaves them alone. He’s a good dog, bless him, but he does get run a bit ragged with the bright yard light casting a shadow all night. When it’s chilly outside, he tends to curl up in the doghouse, but when the warmer weather comes, I will once again have to tie him up at night to prevent him pacing along the house, where the yard light projects his taunting shadow all night long.

I also have to keep tabs on him when my living room light is on. I had my family over for dinner once (you may think this sounds uncharacteristically domestic of me, and you are right: Sister was the domestic behind all the prep and planning), and Brother was sitting innocently on the couch when I noticed Ben outside the window. He was pouncing and digging in the snow outside, in desperate pursuit of the shadow of Brother’s head. He was down to the lawn grass already, so I sent him away - he went a little way out, but then just sat down and watched the shadow.

We closed the curtains.

Maybe at this point you have surmised that Ben is probably not a great watch dog for me. I’m not sure. Once, when I was getting home in the dark, I heard a snap in the trees nearby. Ben was with me, so I got him worked up and barking. I did this so that if someone was in the trees about to jump out and kill me, at least they would get barked at first. Ben didn’t go and investigate, but, to his credit, he stayed with me and barked.

I had the impression that Ben wouldn’t pick a fight with anything bigger than him, but one evening he seemed to prove me wrong. I went to feed the horses one evening just as it was getting dark. Ben had been with me, but he usually opts to stay away from the horses as they stress him out (they like to sniff him and he knows he's not supposed to bite them). Generally he waits around until I’m done, then follows me back up toward the house, but this time I entered their pen one way, fed the horses as it rapidly got darker, then exited their pen from another spot. The paddock is large and the area in question is sort of U-shaped, so I entered on one point of the U and exited on the other.

I guess I can see how Ben was bamboozled. He was loyally waiting for me to come back the way he had seen me go, when suddenly a dark shape emerges from the other side! The snow was alternately hard and soft, so I must have looked like quite the lumbering beast as I flailed around, falling through the snow with every other step and trying to keep my balance.

Ben started barking, but I was trying not to fall, so I didn’t notice him until he was running haltingly up to me, hackles raised and sounding a deep, mean bark. If I was a stranger, he certainly would have deterred me.

Fortunately, I just had to say his name and he recognized my voice. He happily followed my shadow back to the house.

I’m not sure what inspired him to protect me from myself in that moment, but most other times, Ben is excited to greet anyone that comes to the yard. Since I’ve had a fair few dog-loving friends out to visit, he figures new people will be likely to throw sticks for him to fetch. So far he’s bang on. Who could resist an excited Border Collie that drops a stick at your feet and stares at it? Not my friends.

My only hope for protection against anyone coming into the yard uninvited is that Ben will be prancing around behind them, dementedly staring at their shadows. Hopefully that will throw them off, mentally, and they’ll leave before Ben brings them any sticks.

Well, that’s all for now! Stay tuned for news on my current undertaking, which is getting my Class 1A license. If things end badly, I probably won’t put words to the wounds... so let’s keep our fingers crossed that you hear from me soon!