Chain saws. lawn mowers, blowers and trimmers oh my! These common yard tools have two things in common:
- They all require that the user yank on a rope to start the engine.
- They all hate me.
#2 above is nothing new. Seemingly forever, my life has been beset by diabolical frustrations emanating from the Briggs & Stratton families, the Tecumseh clan and others. Endless hours pulling on the start rope, from the heat of the summer sun to the bone-chilling depths of winter, rarely can convince the machinations of these groups to actually fire and perform their intended function. It’s like Boom-chug-a-lugga but without the boom part; only a gurgling sound of about-to-start, just enough to convince you to yank on that rope just one more time. And one more yank turns to 50, and the cycle continues.
My mind is more scientific than mystical, but after all these years, I am actually rather convinced that it really is me. I can take one of these recalcitrant machines to the local small engine repair whizzes and watch as they start the infernal thing on the first pull. I pay to have plugs replaced, fuel lines cleaned, filters renewed, only to get the thing home, yank the rope, and…nothing. Just chug-a-lugga.
How can this constantly be? Well, in decades of managing machines (computer systems, mostly large ones), I will in all humility claim that I almost always won. Rare was the system that could fail and not be revived by wily craft and treacherous experience. Unheard of was the interface that couldn’t be improved, or the process that couldn’t be optimized, or the bug that couldn’t be vanquished. Frankly, it was a ball.
The world of the machines could not let this state of affairs go unchallenged. I remain convinced that, much like the dogs in ‘101 Dalmatians’ spread word throughout the city about the pups’ perilous conditions, the machines have conspired among themselves to somehow take this conniving human to task for the sins of mastery committed over many years. And the job of exacting this particular form of revenge has fallen to the engines that start with a pull rope.
And what a job those engines have done. Lawns uncut, with the still mower sitting in the dark among the ankle-height weeds. Trees unfelled, with bar oil and gloves laying unused at the base. And more and more incomplete tasks, successfully thwarted by the mass movement among the pull start engines to prevent productivity by refusing to start.
So, after all these years, it is perhaps time to move on. I was admiring a neighbor’s battery-powered mower as it glided, seemingly effortlessly and silently, over the freshly cut grass. Another neighbor was using a battery-powered trimmer to cut the grass around bird baths, rock gardens and various other lawn outcroppings. And as I pondered the possibilities in the back of my mind while simultaneously preparing to mow my own lawn, I gassed up the mower and got ready to do battle.
Started on the first pull. Bastards.
In no particular order 