Fiddly Hobbies in Crazy Times

I have this rage for order. It is an impossible ask of the universe, even on a farm. Especially on a farm where in a month, the weeds will erupt and I cannot find any young folks with lives uncomplicated enough to come help with projects that need doing first. I cannot get help, even when I offer to pay them far more than minimum wage.

Now we have 300’ of wire fencing to install, all by our arthritic selves. Yet I feel a strange sense of optimism.

How did that happen? I am a pessimist to the core. A change of outlook started with a big problem that I solved by fixing something little. After a frustrating year off the road, my wife’s 1968 pickup will roll again. I had sheared a bolt’s head off when putting on a valve-cover and new gasket. For a few months, I pretty much threw in the towel. The truck also needed a heater core, a surprisingly difficult task on those vehicles, as compared to many newer pickups. 

More towels almost got tossed.

So I went in the house and built airplane models. I fixed a few things in the shop. I organized spare parts and tossed a lot of junk out.

Fiddly, yes, but confidence-building exercises. Then I read about how to drill out a broken-off bolt and how to rethread a hole to set a new bolt. Then I read about how to remove a Chevy heater core without removing the truck’s fender or hood (a job requiring two strong sets of arms). Then I invented a technique not found on YouTube but based on a tip there.

Soon enough, all by myself and with only a few curses and skinned knuckles, I had a heater core and valve cover that did not leak. When the other cover seeped oil, I fixed it in minutes and did not shear off another bolt. Then I fixed up a drag-harrow whose many parts have stymied me for a while. It worked beautifully to prepare a field for seeding.

“Not through our walking, but through our stumbling is the world saved,” a Yoga teacher once said, at the end of a challenging class. Add “fiddling” to her maxim.

Start fiddling. The world is in a bad place, and we will need to do some fixing as soon as the know-nothing who is breaking things goes away.