Plague Year

      Samuel Pepys, Daniel Defoe, and me?  Lo, plagues will be with us always.

The one I remember best and worst, 1968, Hong Kong Flu.  It killed nearly a million people worldwide.  I think it came close to killing me. I don’t think there was ever a thought of shutting the world down to halt the spread of the virus.  “Hong Kong Flu” is probably a politically incorrect name nowadays. 

     I indulged in two ill-advised activities prior to the disease’s onset.  I went to North High School in Denver sometime in November.  It was a class requirement—Methods and Observation, the class.  It was a crowded place, North High.  The Hong Kong flu must have been having a picnic.

      Having survived the trip to and from Denver and the observation of some of the English classes at North High, I stopped at Club Leto, or whatever it was called, somewhere in the dive called Garden City south of Greeley.  That was a mistake.  A little too much to drink caused me to wake up the next day with what turned out to be much more than a normal hangover.

     I know I missed more than a week of classes.  Friends had to bring me groceries.  I was too weak to leave the house.  I lived on Coke and canned soup, I think.  I couldn’t keep up with wiping my nose with tissue.  When the waste basket got full of discarded tissues, I put the basket on the floor between my knees and let my head hang over and drip into the basket.

      I think I lost at least fifteen pounds.  I was not back to normal for at least two months.  It was a struggle to finish the quarter and begin my student teaching in January.   I survived, and I have never had a serious case of respiratory-type flu since then. 

     The next memorable flu pandemic was the swine flu of 1976.  This time, pigs bore the brunt of the blame, although the truth is, the swine flu came from China as well.  Again, there was no thought of disrupting the world’s economy to save lives.

     I remember a speaker presenting a “Lyceum”, what we used to call an assembly program, at our Kansas school, on the swine flu.  He said the virus developed in China where pigs shared the home with the family and managed to adapt from swine to humans.  Thus, the swine flu.  He offered the now-ubiquitous advice to frequently wash your hands, capture your coughs and sneezes with tissue or handkerchief (using elbows hadn’t been invented yet), and stay home if you don’t feel well. 

       Nobody followed the advice much.  I remember one poor kid who was on a severe diet so he could make weight on the wrestling team.  He caught the flu.  No question he could make weight.  But he barely had the strength to walk up the stairs at the high school, let alone take on a wrestling opponent.  He looked like he had drunk a bottle of bleach, he was that white.

     Gerald Ford was our president, our only unelected one, in 1976.  He kicked off a campaign to vaccinate America so the flu would not become pandemic.  Companies rushed into production to produce enough vaccine to do the job.

      On a warm October afternoon, the Goodwife and I stood in a line nearly a block long in our small town, waiting our turn to get vaccinated against the swine flu.  In front of us was a farmer named Earle who was the father of four girls and who had recently lost his wife to cancer. 

     That accidental shuffling of us human cards would have a lasting effect on my life.  Earle and I would go on to own airplanes together.  When I quit teaching in 1980, Earle hired me to drive his tractor and help him remodel his house.  We would remain friends for the rest of his life.

     Gerry Ford’s mass vaccination backfired a little bit.  The pandemic didn’t really develop in 1976-77.  Many people suffered from Guillain-Barre syndrome after being vaccinated, and the vaccine was blamed.  Some folks say the reaction to the 1976 mass vaccination was the beginning of the anti-vaxxer movement still alive today.

     Gerry Ford ran for election in 1976, and some pundits blame the flu vaccine fiasco for his loss, but in reality, Gerry had other problems, namely the pardoning of his former boss, Richard Nixon.  His “WIN” campaign (Whip Inflation Now) probably didn’t help.  History has proved him to be an honest, down-to-earth man (“I’m a Ford, not a Lincoln”, he used to say), something sadly lacking in today’s political arena.

       Here in March of 2020, our leaders have shut the world economy down in order to protect human life.  Everywhere we hear the time-honored advice, “Wash your hands, Roger, wash your hands”.  Cover your coughs and sneezes.  Stay home if you don’t feel well.

      Panic has driven folks to hoard toilet paper and sanitizers of all kinds.  Old people are particularly vulnerable to the disease. 

      Our three-year-old granddaughter fell ill a couple of weeks ago.  She had a high fever that eventually led her mother to take her to urgent care as advised by the family doctor.  The doctor also said to keep her away from her grandparents, for months.

      The urgent care folks tested granddaughter for flu, found her flu free, and eventually sent her on to the emergency room because she had lung congestion.  At the ER, they tested her again for the flu, even though Mom told them she had already been tested.  They prescribed an inhaler to keep her breathing going and sent them home.

      In a day or two, the fever subsided and granddaughter seemed back to normal.  Then, the fever came back.  This time, the doctor visit consisted of the patient staring into a smart phone while the health care professional observed on her screen from a very safe distance.  (No coming into the doctor’s office if you are sick.  If you aren’t sick, no chance of getting into the doctor’s office either.  Hmmmm.) 

     When granddaughter thought she was going to have to return to the urgent care facility, she began to cry and importune her mother.  It took a few tries, but she finally made her mother understand, she didn’t have any boogers, her nose was clean, don’t let them stick that stick in her nose again.

      The poor little girl was spared another flu test, and even a trip out of the kitchen.  The health care professional prescribed something, which she was to take if things didn’t clear up in the next day or two.  All of this done by phone.  Again, she rallied and then suffered a relapse.  Maybe it will end soon.  Does she have CoViD-19?  No way of knowing because there is no test unless you have a doctor’s prescription.

      Anyway, we have stayed clear.  I have no desire to see if my viral immunity from 1968 is effective with what’s going on now.  I haven’t taken a flu vaccine many times since 1976.  If they develop one for CoViD-19, I will go stand in line again.  

      We have never taken such steps in reaction to a health crisis.  When I was a kid, I feared polio.  I saw pictures in My Weekly Reader of kids in iron lungs.  I think I would have rather died than be confined in that contraption.  We all took our March of Dimes cards home and filled the slots with dimes.  We never thought to cancel school or confine folks to their homes.  Eventually there would be a vaccine to insure no one had to ever suffer from polio again.

     We will get through this one, too.  Eventually, there will be a vaccine.          

      But I have to ask, will the cure for CoViD-19 be worse than the disease.  Will poverty result from draconian shut downs?  Will folks emerge in better or worse shape as a result of our attempts to dodge the virus?

       

     

Tree Cutting

     An aspen tree in the backyard died last summer.  It wouldn’t have been too hard to knock down except that it was about two feet from the fence / property line, and about eight feet from the house.  And about a foot from its bigger neighbor aspen.  Add about two feet to all those dimensions and it will be about right.

      I enlisted Neighbor Brian and in two sessions, we took it down.  I regret that I neglected to take any pictures of the event.  The tree had two main trunks, forking about four feet above the ground.  We took out the first one in an hour or two.

     I crawled up as high as a sixteen-foot ladder would take me and tied a rope to a sturdy branch.  Brian pulled on the rope when the cut was completed and the top fell fairly close to where we wanted it.  It missed the house, but it whacked the fence enough to break off six inches of one slat.

     I tied the rope in two places on the next section, at the top, and right above where I cut next.  When there was only an half inch or so left to cut through, I crawled down the ladder and together we pulled the looped rope.  The thing fell harmlessly in the yard. 

     The rest of the trunk was easily cut into short lengths suitable for the old stove in the farm kitchen.  That was in January, the days were short, and the temperature fell with the sun. 

     It would be nearly a month before we would have another go at it.  This trunk proved to be a bit more of a challenge.  We decided to try to bring it down from the bottom rather than the top.  To control it, we had the rope and about a half dozen come-alongs strapped to it.  One held it to the neighbor tree.  Two tied the tree to posts on the screen porch to keep it out of the neighbor’s yard.   

     The process worked, but it took about three hours to get it down.  After the initial cut, we shoved the trunk over next to the bigger tree beside it.  Every time I cut off a chunk of the bottom, we had to loosen come-alongs and let it down a few feet.  Then we would repeat the process until there was only the smaller chunk from the treetop.

     That was in February.  I hauled the smaller branches to the recycler.  The burnable pieces went to the farm in two small loads.  Aspen doesn’t prove to be much better firewood than Chinese elm.

The "stump" is cut down to ground level, the one closest to the fence.

      

      The second tree stood on the farm.  It once was part of a row of Chinese elms demarking the old board fence separating the corral from the human farmyard.  Corral and fence are long gone.  All but three or four elms have departed as well.  This old feller was the largest of the survivors.  It towered over its brothers and even over shadowed the shop, chimney and all.

     This was also a two-day job.  The chainsaw still had fuel in it from the aspen job.  I had a bit of a struggle to get the chainsaw to run when I was contemplating the aspen job.  I finally put a carburetor kit in it.  I did it reluctantly, because most carburetor jobs I perform result in performance worse than before the overhaul.

    This one worked and after a bit of tuning of jets, the saw ran well.  Conventional wisdom has it that leaving fuel in the carburetor and the lines lead to carburetor failure.  Thus, I needed to get rid of the gas in the tank after the aspen job.  The dead elm was there.  Kill two birds with one stone:  drop a big branch threatening the red barn and get rid of some fuel.

      So I did just that.  It took some moving of junk, mostly old wheels, some with tires still attached.  I also had to trim some smaller elm shoots in order to reach the tree.  A stepladder put me high enough to make the cut.   

      I had misjudged the reach of the branch.  I thought it would miss the red barn.  Most of it did, but some of the upper most branches struck the eaves trough and resulted in a bit of a dent, but the branches were brittle and broke off with contact.  No real damage.

      I used up the rest of the fuel on some old fence posts that make great firewood.  I took great care to locate nails and staples left in the old posts.  I was using a newly sharpened chain.  The fuel ran out and I put the saw away for another week. 

      I was fairly sure I could drop the tree to the west, but I wasn’t in any mood to take a chance.  So I cut off one more east leaning branch.  The difficulty was the direction of the wind.  It blew sawdust into my face as I cut.  No help for it.  To get upwind, I had to be right under the branch I was amputating. 

      With the last east leaning branch gone, I tied the “well” rope to a branch as high as I could reach.  I tied the other end to the old Dodge pickup and took up the slack. 

  Two down, two to go.

      I went to work on the trunk, cutting a “grin” in the direction I wished the thing to fall.  Then from the side opposite the grin, I began the final cut.

    When less than an inch remained to complete the cut, I started the Dodge and put it into low gear.  My plan was to let it idle in gear and tug while I finished the cut.

      But when I eased the Dodge into the load, I heard a crack and the tree fell.  The Dodge edged forward, and the tree fell just where I had directed it.

     Nothing left but to cut the timber into stove lengths and clean up the mess.  The northeast wind blew cooler and cooler.

Firewood sorted and stacked, I wore a sweatshirt and a jacket to unload the smaller branches on the trash pile.

      I will have to split the bigger chunks.  That will be another day’s work.       

 

           

Snow Blower--Again

   Oh no, not again, thought I.   I thought I had the snow blower working a year ago. (http://50farm.blogspot.com/2018/02/snow-blower.html)  It ran last spring when I moved it to the back yard.  When I tried to start it this winter, when the weather forecasters all predicted a coming storm, nary a snort would it utter no matter how many times I pulled the starter rope.

     I shoveled a lot of snow this winter.  During sunny times, I pulled the cowling off the flywheel, removed the flywheel, checked the points, everything I could think of.  I lost count of how many times I disassembled, reassembled, and tugged fruitlessly on that starter rope.

     Finally one fine day, I went to the local small engine dealer and got a new coil, points and condenser. I got a new flywheel key, too.  Sometimes a jimmied key can set the flywheel off enough to interfere with the timing.

     There were trials and tribulations, but eventually I got everything right, the correct gap on the points, the correct gap between the coil arms and the flywheel, the flywheel key in correctly (that key isn’t square, I found after several unsuccessful tries one sunny day).  Filled with hope and confidence, I pulled the starter rope.  And again and again, I pulled.  Nothing.

      I tried priming the cylinder by removing the spark plug and dropping  a couple of drops of gas into the cylinder..  I tried a little starting fluid sprayed directly into the carburetor.  Nothing worked.

      Then the thought came, I have fixed the wrong problem.  But how could I be wrong?  It obviously had fuel.  It had to be spark.  During those short days, I didn’t have much time to work on it.  When it go too cold, I picked up my tools, put things away and retreated to the heated space.

     I never quit thinking about the problem.  How could that system work when everything is grounded except the coil and the core of the spark plug?  The condenser is grounded, even the business nipple because it is tied to the grounded part of the coil.  The points remain open except for a quick dip as the piston rises.

      I brought the old coil and condenser into the warmth and went after it with my ohmmeter.  That was the way it worked.

      A new idea entered my head.  Maybe I needed a few more rpms than I could get with the pull rope.  I made a farm trip one cool day.  One of the things I brought back from the farm was an electric motor out of a washing machine.  I threw in a short v-belt, too.

      On another warmish day, I pulled the shield off the drive end of the Briggs & Stratton to find two v-belts, one driving the blower part of the machine, the other providing the ground drive.  It didn’t take much to get one of the belts off, my short belt on the engine shaft, the other end on the electric motor pulley.  It should work.

     But first, I had to wire a pig tail into the electric motor.  I used a couple of alligator clips to hold bare wires to the contact points on the engine.  When I plugged it in, I couldn’t hold the motor still.  When it jumped with the torque, the clips made contact with each other.

      There were sparks.  And a kicked breaker.  At first, I thought it was the ground-fault interrupter that had kicked.  After a few minutes of terminal work, I had correct clips on the pig tail and the clips attached to the spades in the engine.

      I thought I reset the GFI buttons, but when I plugged it in, nothing.  It took quite a while to trace the correct breaker.  I found it, finally, in the breaker box in the basement laundry room.  I reset the breaker, then the GFI outlet.  This time, when I plugged it in, the motor took off.

      Soon I had an extension cord strung out, the electric motor resting on the snow blower housing, the belt on both the electric and the gas motor pulleys.  It took a few tries, but with good timing, I managed to get the electric motor to spin the gas motor a few revolutions. 

     I had to get enough tension on the belt by pulling the electric motor into the belt.  The electric motor didn’t particularly care for this activity.  It would stop until I let off some of the tension, but eventually I got everything going.  The electric motor had the Briggs & Stratton turning quite a few rpms.  Nothing.  Not a pop, not a snort, or cough.  Nothing.

       It was dark this time when I put everything away, both externally and internally.  I must have fixed the wrong problem, but what could be the real problem?

      Eventually, I turned to the internet.  I had been there before with not much success.  I stumbled upon a guy who had essentially the same problem I did—all new parts, all carefully installed.  I followed the year-old conversation.  The expert said if he had everything in there, it either had to be a faulty coil or condenser or spark plug wire.  The victim insisted that he had checked everything with his ohmmeter.  They were all good.

      The expert came back with, maybe you installed the coil upside down.  The next response, the victim was ecstatic.  Yes, you are a genius!  I removed the coil, turned it over, remounted, regapped, and voila! The thing started on the first pull.

     Well, on the snow blower, it couldn’t be upside down, because the coil is mounted vertically.  But it could be inside out.  I had nothing to lose.  I pulled the coil off to see if it would fit going on the other way.     

      Yes it would.  What do you know?  Could this be it?  I reinstalled and regapped the coil.  With everything in place, I jerked the starting rope.  It didn’t start, but there was more than a nothing.  It kicked back and tried to rotate backwards.

      I checked the throttle, pulled out the choke, and gave the rope another pull.  Vroom!  It was running!  Yay, I did it, folksies!

     It’s March.  There could be another snowstorm bad enough to require a snow blower.  I think I might have jinxed that, maybe.  I didn’t pull the machine around to the front.  If we do get another heavy snow, even then will be some scooping.  I will have to dig out the back gate to get it open enough to get the snow blower through.

      Now I have second thoughts about my second thoughts. The original problem must have been a faulty coil, because the old coil wasn’t on there wrong-side-out and it wasn't working.

     I didn’t fix the wrong problem.  I fixed the problem wrong.