Saturday, May 24, 2008
By PAUL WHITEFIELD
My wife and I have two boys, 12 and 14. At their age, I mowed yards, $5 a yard. My gardener charges $200 a month.
Boys, meet yard work.
I needed a mower. On sale at Osh — a Craftsman with a Briggs Stratton engine.
The boys are eager. Start slow: Gas goes here; oil goes there.
“Uh, Dad” — it’s the younger one — “I think I put the gas where the oil goes.”
Rome wasn’t mowed in a day.
They each get $10 for mowing the yard; one does the front, the other the back.
Summer turns to fall, then winter, then spring. Grass is mowed. Money changes hands.
The mower breaks. It has a bad governor spring.
I take the tiny spring — What a Mickey Mouse part, my dad would have said — to a lawn mower shop.
“What’s the engine number?” the clerk asks.
I drive home. I find a number. I call. “That’s not the right number,” the clerk says.
I look again. I find another number. I call.
“We don’t have that spring in stock. We can order it. If there’s one in the state of California, we can get it in about a week.”
I go to another lawn mower shop.
“What’s the model number?” this clerk asks.
“I only have the engine number,” I say.
“What kind of shaft on this engine, vertical or horizontal?” he asks. “Is it a reel mower?”
“It’s a Craftsman mower with a Briggs Stratton engine.”
“How old is this mower?” he asks.
“About a year.”
“Ah, that’s probably the problem; it’s too new,” he says.
Cheap products
A second clerk chimes in. “This is the trouble with America,” she says. “Everything’s made cheap. Companies don’t care.”
The other clerk returns from the back. “We don’t have it. I can order it.”
I try a third lawn mower shop.
I show the spring. I give the clerk the part number. She doesn’t want any numbers. She returns with a totally different spring.
“You can make this work. You have tools?”
Yes, I have tools. No, they won’t help. “But it doesn’t have any way to hook it on,” I stammer, “and it’s too long, and ...”
“OK, I can order it.”
I go to Sears. I take my wife. The self-help minicomputer parts machine wants a model number.
“It’s this one,” I tell my wife, pointing to a mower on display. She writes down the model number.
We punch the number into the computer. It lists a few parts. Air cleaner. Sparkplug. Oil. The word “order” appears after most of them. No springs.
We walk back to the mower on display.
“The spring is right here; feel it?” I show her.
She reaches under the air cleaner. She fiddles. She gets lawn mower oil on her hand.
“Ugh,” she says, struggling, and unclips the spring.
“We’re leaving,” I say.
“If you’d given me a few more seconds, I could’ve gotten it off,” she hisses as we walk out.
My mower is broken. My kids are idle. My yard is growing. My wife’s a closet Winona Ryder.
The spring is on order.
That’s the trouble with America.
X Whitefield is the copy desk chief for the Los Angeles Times’ editorial pages.