How many jerks does it take?

A gorgeous Saturday -- sunny, not too hot. The kind of spring day designed for swinging softly in the hammock, sipping a lemonade and reading a couple of paragraphs before dozing off.

We don't have a hammock, but we do have prematurely tall grass and a crotchety Sears mower in the barn, waiting for its first outing of the year. And four new tires in the barn waiting to be mounted and installed on my Saturn. So much for dozing.

Loaded up the old tires -- the ones that came with the car, still on their original wheels -- plus the new ones fresh from Tire Rack, and dropped them off to be mounted. Several years ago we bought a set of snow tires from Tire Rack, pre-mounted so that I can change from summer to winter tires myself. Buying the snow tires was easy: a few mouse clicks, and three days later the Blizzaks show up on the porch, ready to be bolted on. Today was harder, and I felt like I ought to apologize for presenting these alien tires to the store to be mounted. The manager didn't seem offended, and said they would be ready in a couple of hours.

Stopped at Hess to top off the Santa Fe and to fill the gas can for the lawnmower. A biker on the other side of the pump apparently had similar plans: he was filling an identical red plastic can, lashed to the seat of his motorcycle with a nylon strap embroidered with skulls every few inches. I was feeling rather pleased with myself, pumping regular at only $2.99 a gallon when it's about a dime higher everywhere else. Funny how little it takes to distort one's point of view...

Back home and out to the barn. First job: clean up and put away the snowblower. Two winters ago we bought a big honking Ariens that can cut through several feet of lake effect and deposit it in our neighbor's driveway 70 feet away. (It can, but we don't. We have wonderful neighbors who appreciate us mainly for not being like the previous residents, who liked to vandalize the neighborhood. We got the warmest welcome when we moved in!)

As it happens, the Ariens, in addition to being equipped with a monster Snow King engine, AC electric starter, headlight and heated handgrips, apparently comes standard with super powers: since we bought it, we have had fewer than ten occasions to use it. Normally, we get enough snow to run the thing more than that in a couple of weeks. But I'm not really complaining.

The funny thing is, the Ariens seems determined to be never fully utilized. Aside from the lack of significant storms, the features that seemed so important at the store just haven't been relevant, especially the electric starter. My dad bought a similarly sized Ariens about 30 years ago, and while it was a real workhorse, it took a fair amount of cranking to get it started. You definitely did not want to stall it at the bottom of the driveway, because that meant you had to start it by hand, jerking forever on a little rubber tee. But the new one is different: it has this big pull ring that you can grab even with snowmobile gloves. So the day our new one arrived from the store, I thought I'd just give it a couple of pulls for fun before plugging it in, mostly to feel good about buying the electric starter. I didn't get the chance: it roared into rude orange life on the first pull. Cold. And it's been that way ever since. I have never even tried the electric starter, and the only reason it ever takes more than one pull is if I forget to put in the plastic ignition key. So I wheeled it out into the sunshine, squirted some gasoline stabilizer into the tank and started it with the usual single pull, and let it run.

Pulled the mower out of the barn, checked the oil and the spark plug, and filled the tank with about half the can of gas. It used to cost about as much to fill the 77 Chevette, but that's another story. Squeezed the red rubber primer bulb a few times, and gave the rope a manly pull -- nothing. Pulled again and again. Squeezed the primer some more, fiddled with the spark plug, pulled some more. Nothing. Maybe it was intimidated by the Ariens next to it, roaring away. Ran the snowblower back into the barn and shut it off -- deafening silence.

Back out to the mower. More pulling, more priming, more fiddling. Nothing for the effort except for a dull twitch in my right shoulder. And then I thought: maybe it's dead. Maybe I can get a new one, one that starts on the first pull. I wonder if Ariens makes lawn mowers. All I have to do is to prove to Laurie that it's dead, never coming back, and that we NEED to replace it. It's never worked very well, never wants to start, is self-destructive -- it's already eaten two plastic discharge chutes. The evil auto-cannibalistic mower from hell is finally dead! I'll go in and break the sad news, after just last pull...

It started, coughing and sputtering and surrounding me in a stinky blue cloud.

It's not fair.