It'll be as good as new...

"No need to call a repairman."
"I've got just the thing to fix that."
Either one of those statements should be on my dad's tombstone. He was one of those guys who was determined never to "waste" money hiring a pro when household problems came to call. This is on my mind today as I try to determine a reasonable course of action regarding a much needed fix for the thingymobob framdamnitz valve on our outdoor sprinkler system. The damn thing shoots water straight up into the air and not on the junk that grows and seems to need water.

Son of a bitch!! I hate dealing with crap like this. The main reason is that I am no good at it and seem incapable of even remotely describing the problem well enough to the guys at Home Depot to enable them to sell me the correct hardware to fix it myself.
I'm screwed.


Why is it that some guys have all the fancy tools needed to repair just about anything that breaks and others, like my dad and me, have a couple of dippy screw drivers , a busted hammer and not a glimmer of a clue on how to use them?

When I was a kid our family had any number of appliances that needed to be treated with special care because of some exotic fix dad had created for them. There was the waffle iron which featured one leg that was formerly an orange colored bottle stopper. Or, how about the coffee table that would fall down every six months or so until dad "repaired" it with his special combination of Elmer's glue and rubber bands. His master work, the one that had the whole neighborhood talking, was the ancient Bendix clothes washer that lived in our basement. Mom complained for months that the stupid washing machine would dance around the cellar whenever it went into its spin cycle. (My brother and I loved this and took turns riding the errant machine as it went berserk.) Finally, tiring of the constant nagging, dad secured a monster sized cement block from some friend of his and proceeded to mount and tie the washer to the top of it with an elaborate array of ropes and knots. This cure worked...sort of...for awhile. The machine continued to buck and lurch but now was confined to a range of only four to five feet. Victory!

The federal government could have used dad. That's the kind of Mr. Fixit the country needs!

So, here I sit trying desperately to think of how dad would handle the major project I have before me.

Hmmmm.

Hand me that bottle stopper...

Better yet, a beverage.