Soapweed
Well-known member
A few days ago I was walking out of the local gas station and saw my friend Rob Cook replacing a wheel bearing on a truck axle. He was elbow deep in grease, and looked somewhat uncomfortable doing the task at hand. I congratulated him on his work ethic and ability. He grinned, said he wasn't much of a professional at this type of work, and declared himself to be the worst mechanic in the area. "No," I said, "That would be me." He smiled again, and said that maybe there was a fellow, now departed, who was even mechanically less inclined than either himself or me. He remembered that during the mid-1970's, there was quite a fad of ranchers putting down big wells and pivot irrigation systems. This man proclaimed to his wife that he was thinking of putting in a pivot on a certain level area of his ranch. His wife groaned at the mere thought, and reminded her husband, "You can't even fix a float on a toilet bowl. How in the world are you going to keep an irrigation system running?" Her husband had to agree, and thus refrained from becoming a farmer. His ranching operation did stay solvent whereas many of his more mechanically-minded progressive neighbors eventually experienced financial difficulty.