Snow Blower Sagas

Friday morning, I picked up my snow blower from the repair shop. This is not a sentence that a boy from Savannah, Georgia, ever expects to write—or even think.

The repair shop had cleaned the carburetor, replaced a spark plug, tuned the engine, checked the blades, replaced the oil, and refilled the fuel tank. If writing that list implies that I understand very much about motors or their maintenance, I can assure you that I am out of my element there too. Presumably, if I knew how to handle the necessary maintenance, I could have done the jobs myself and saved $78.65. I’m not that crazy! I may need the snow blower this winter, and I want to know it will work if called upon. Fixing things mechanical is not in my DNA.  

According to the repair shop owner, I’m now all set to deal with a winter of snow that I hope will never come in New Jersey but would welcome farther north where we hope to ski this winter.

There I go again, talking about skiing. Something else a Savannah boy seldom expects to discuss—or even think about.

The snow blower is not a recent purchase, but it was made only about 10 years ago after a lot of soul searching. For many years living in my transplanted northern home, I figured that snow shoveling was good exercise. For several of those years, I was also under the delusion that my then teenaged children would take up the shovels and spare me the task (right!). Finally, I came to the conclusion that neither of my reasons for avoiding buying a snow blower was based on fact. Besides, the children were no longer teens and no longer living at the family manse.

So the snow blower and I became winter partners about a decade ago. We are not close partners, however. I still have to reread the manual every winter to make sure which switch to move where to get the machine started. And it often coughs at me if I don’t do the settings right—or is it sneering?

So many parts to manipulate in the right order!

I am not alone in my snow blower maintenance mysteries or miseries. Last year, my friend Gary decided that he needed a new snow blower. Combining that need with his basic cheapness, he ordered the machine from an online source. He knew it came with “some assembly required,” but he decided to ignore that fact, as well as his basic incompetence when it came to assembling machines. “I saved over $300,” he proudly announced.

The snow blower arrived in a large box and in many pieces. It also came with diagrams and detailed assembly instructions written in that special language that instruction manual writers use. Gary was perplexed. 

A big box, many parts, unfathomable instructions!

He brought the problem up at the next gathering of our Tuesday morning breakfast club. The club consists of several aging Jewish men. Amazingly, at least two of our group are not incompetent when it comes to tools or to reading assembly instructions. (I am not one of those, obviously, nor is Gary.)

So Mark decided to take on the task of assembling Gary’s snow blower with Gary serving as kibitzer and helper. It took a number of hours, but the job appeared to be done. Then Mark noted that one piece seemed to be attached in the wrong direction and another was just left over on the ground. Gary’s wife Adrienne watched the proceedings with a look of amusement, though (good for her) she didn’t offer any criticism. Just that smile.

The next Tuesday morning, Mark and Gary described the problem at our breakfast gathering, and Bruce, our other mechanically-minded member, offered to help. A convoy left the diner for Gary’s house. Mark and Bruce took on needed disassembly and reassembly with Gary looking on. During the process, Adrienne arrived home and noted the array of cars in her driveway. She walked over and took in the messy scene.

“The saga continues,” she announced with a laugh. Wives can be so cruel!

Amazingly, the crew did get the machine into working shape in a relatively short time. Though I never learned how well it ran last winter when the snows finally arrived.

As for my own snow blower saga, things went pretty well last winter, start-up-wise. After one snowfall, I even tried to persuade Audrey to join in on the fun of pushing the snow blower through 10 inches of the white stuff on our driveway. Within five minutes, she deserted me and went back inside. Snow removal is man’s work, it seems.

And so is snow blower maintenance, though it’s lucky for me and my snow blower that I am able to farm out the maintenance task to another far more competent man. One who is not handicapped by my mixture of Southern (non-snow) heritage and serious lack of mechanical instinct.