Wednesday Racket (OT)

Here's the first official Wednesday Racket post, which is a good place to make observations or post comments that have nothing whatsoever to do with the subject matter of the previous At Stake, My Take post - or any other "live" one. Lurkers are welcome, as always. But keep in mind that this isn't the place to address questions to me about tennis. We're still trying to work out how to find a good format for that, since the response to the Any Questions? post-Australian item was so strong (I'll try to answer more questions from that thread tomorrow).

Meanwhile, I do have a topic to get the OT ball rolling. I recently exchanged emails with regular Comment poster Codepoke, and somehow the talk turned to farm machinery. He told me a story I want to share with you, and here are the things you need to know to understand the anecdote (pay attention ladies, you need to know this stuff!): A magneto is a magnetically-based electrical system used to provide a spark plug with enough juice to ignite the gasoline in an engine (it takes something like 20,000 volts); the magneto is essentially a substitute for a battery; the only catch is that you have to use a hand crank to get the engine running. Then the magneto takes care of the rest. Anyway, Codepoke wrote:

When I was about 9 my father had an old, old Cat tractor. It was a hand crank start, and had a magneto based ignition system. He worked for days, and could not get that bad boy to start. The whole family felt sorry for him, but the measure of my sympathy was tested and came up lacking.

He had me stand out there and hold a spark plug wire while he cranked that engine. The magneto was working JUST FINE, I assure you. Over and over and over again he tried to coax that little bit more out of the magneto. I wept like a baby.

I stood there cringing and grimacing while he exhausted himself against that massive crank. And that worthless piece of yellow iron would bite me every fourth turn. Every shot felt deadly to that little nine year old kid, and I prayed and prayed and prayed that the stupid beast would start. It finally did - about two months later - but Dad never asked me to help him that way again.

He couldn't stand seeing his son wimp out so badly.

It was years before I could laugh at that story. :-)

Thanks for reminding me. He was a good man.

(Ed.note: the remainder of this post was somehow deleted by Typepad after I put it up last night: I suggested that you all submit stories of the dumbest, weirdest things your parent(s) ever made you do - so if you were the overweight kid whose mommy insisted on dressing you as an elephant in a tutu for Halloween, or if your father's idea of teaching you how to swim was flinging you off the end of the dock, we want to hear about it! - PB)