Thursday, September 2, 2021

My visit to the clinic this morning resulted in no Covid test because none of my symptoms fit the description. Instead I'm to finish the course of antibiotics to end the staph infection, and take Vitamin C and iron supplement tablets to counter the anemia that's apparently causing my malaise and low-grade bellyache. From the clinic I went to the Walmart auto shop with a slow leak in the new tire I bought recently. The place was so busy that I waited a couple of hours for the folks there to find that the tire was ruined by a nail in a bad place, and install a replacement tire. At home I pulled the left rear wheel off the runabout with an eye toward replacing a leaking rear axle seal. I washed the oil off everything, and that's as far as I got. I'm still spending way too much time lying down and feeling sick.


Friday, September 3, 2021

After weeks without a drop of moisture that left a lot of the vegetation wilting, this morning began with a nice rain storm. I proceeded with that leaking rear axle seal, but had to take a couple of hours out to fix the bearing sleeve puller so I could get the sleeve out and clear the way for removing the old seal. I found the bearing and the sleeve both in good condition, and it's remarkable that these hundred-year-old Hyatt bearings have no more wear than .0025" at most, and many of them only .0015" or less. Ford made cars cheap, but with superior quality materials. When the time came for grocery shopping this afternoon, I departed from the usual fruits and veggies. For dinner tonight I bought a bag of kettle cooked potato chips and a container of ice cream. I wanted to see if a load of carbs and dairy would settle my queasy innards. For several days I've felt not like I was about to enter the barfitorium, but in the neighborhood and headed that way. The unusual  meal seems to have helped. This evening I still feel sick, but better. Maybe the carbs and dairy did that, or maybe the pills I've been taking, or both.


Saturday, September 4, 2021

If I had been traveling as planned I would have missed it, but I felt well enough today to go to a gathering at a neighbor's ranch to remember an old friend. Friends and family of Sharon Olmstead met to celebrate her life and share stories. I remarked that I'm the only person who has shaken hands with Count Basie and Donald Segretti, bought beer from Karen Valentine, and sat on a couch between Fibber McGee and the Great Gildersleeve, and young folks could Google those names and find out who all those people were. The point wasn't my status as a minor Zelig, but that Sharon was as memorable to me as anybody I ever met, and more so than most. I got to know her when I moved to Kansas in 1985 and got a part time job at the Cherokee Strip Museum, where she was director at the time. It didn't take long to learn that she was smart, capable, and fun to be around. She beat cancer several years ago, but it came back and got her on July 1. When I saw the newspaper announcement of today's gathering, it took away some of the disappointment of being too sick to travel.


Friday, September 17, 2021

Howdy, folks! Didja miss me? I just got back this evening and I am pooped. I will tell the exciting tale later. Now I need to bathe and snooze.


Saturday, September 18, 2021

Yesterday afternoon I was on the last leg of my Michigan trip. I was a few miles southeast of Cedar Vale, within an hour or two of home, when the runabout threw a tire. It was my own fault. I should have checked my tire pressure earlier and aired up any tires that were low. I searched all along both sides of the road several times and never did find the missing tire. So I phoned my cousin Pete to come and get me. This morning we returned to the car with a spare wheel. But I wasn't able to get the bearings out of the tireless wheel and put them into the spare. So I had to take the tire off the spare wheel and install it on the tireless wheel. Then, when I tried to inflate the replacement tire the tube popped. So then I installed the spare tube I carried under the seat of the car. The pump wouldn't inflate the tire above 35 psi, which is totally inadequate for clincher tires. They need at least 50 psi, and I run my front tires at 65 psi. For all I know the tire that came off and vanished into the weeds may have been as low as 35 psi. Not only was I unable to inflate the replacement front tire adequately, but I discovered that one of the rear tires was flat. Later I found that it had a nail in it. So we came home and will go back tomorrow with a front wheel and a rear wheel off the 1923 touring car. This being Saturday, it was my town night. Dinner was enchiladas blancas at La Fiesta, a favorite meal. The movie was Twelve Mighty Orphans. We've all seen the basic story before, where a high school coach takes a bunch of misfits and turns them into a winning team. A movie doesn't have to be original to be good, and this one is excellent, beautifully produced and with first rate performances by an outstanding cast.


Sunday, September 19, 2021

This morning I mixed ten gallons of weed killer and sprayed. I worked at that until Pete arrived with her friend Mike, who brought his pickup and a car trailer, and we went to fetch the runabout. I took a spare front wheel and a spare rear wheel. Installing the front wheel was no problem, but we couldn't get the rear wheel with the flat tire off the car. So I started the car and drove it onto the trailer on its flat tire. After we got the car home and unloaded it, I continued trying to remove that rear wheel. All I succeeded in doing was wrecking the hub puller, and the car remains in the yard with that stubborn wheel on it. I'll try again tomorrow.


Monday, September 20, 2021

First up today was using up the rest of that weed killer I mixed yesterday. There's more spraying to do, so I'll get to that later. I had planned to mow today, but after spending an hour yesterday with tweezers pulling off ticks, and an hour Saturday pulling off ticks, and another half hour this morning having the same kind of fun, this afternoon I did laundry and washed my bedding and the clothes I've been wearing lately. These were not the same ticks we've always had, but the little ones that look like tiny black spots. They're so small that they're often hard to grab with the tweezers. I don't' recall seeing them until recent years.

This evening I began posting an account of my Old Car Festival trip on the Model T forum.


Tuesday, September 21, 2021

Today began with an appointment to meet my new doc. She froze some actinic keratosis spots on my arm, and with my blood pressure much improved, cut my BP pills back from two a day to one. When I got home I mixed another five gallons of weed killer and finished my spraying across the road. Then I picked up trash along the road and spent the rest of the day mowing. There's more mowing to do, so that will be continued. This evening I added another day to the account of my recent trip, posted at yesterday's link above.


Wednesday, September 22, 2021

More mowing. The blade on the Dixon mower jammed and burned up the belt. Naturally none was available locally, and I had to order a new one online. I did all the mowing I could with the tractor, then moved on to house cleaning. That will continue tomorrow. Tonight I made another trip entry.


Thursday, September 23, 2021

The project of the day was house cleaning. I finished the bathroom, the back porch, and most of the kitchen, and vacuumed the upstairs bedrooms. In the morning I will do the living room and the front porch and finish the kitchen, and hope to be finished before relatives start arriving for the family reunion. If any of them show up early I may put them to work.


Friday, September 24, 2021

I finished house cleaning, then put the left rear tire back on the runabout with a new tube, so it's available for Model T rides if anybody wants to go. The relatives from Kansas City and Colorado arrived, but my brother phoned from DFW to tell me that the airline was running late and he won't be here until morning. I told him we'd save some food for him.


Saturday, September 25, 2021

My brother arrived late in the evening, and the Texas bunch rolled in a little before noon. We had a nice visit and a swell catered lunch, and in the afternoon took my cousin Ernest Parker's ashes up to the cemetery. Some of the kids got Model T rides, and the promise of more next time. It was great to see everybody, and I hope more will be able to come next time. I will be dining on leftover food for weeks.


Sunday, September 26, 2021

Back to work. In the morning I mixed five more gallons of weed killer and sprayed stuff I missed last time. In the afternoon I made a battery carrier for the runabout. When I was traveling the tool box and other stuff crammed in the trunk kept the battery in place. But yesterday when Mike and I were in town shopping the car suddenly died. The coils would not buzz at all, and we had to roll the car to start it on magneto. I had taken the tool box and some other stuff out of the trunk, and the battery was able to slide around, causing one of the of the wires to work loose. The carrier I made today will keep the battery from wandering. I painted it tonight. It will bake overnight and I'll install it tomorrow.


Monday, September 27, 2021

Well, I never did get the battery carrier installed. I spent the morning with clippers and Tordon, attacking unwanted vegetation along the south side of the road, beside the lane to the wood lot. In the afternoon I went to the clinic with my recurring slight nausea. It seems to come and go, apparently randomly, sometimes strong enough to be uncomfortable and sometimes fading to almost nothing. The PA prescribed some anti-nausea tablets to treat the symptom, which is non-definitive. It could be caused by so many different things that without a lot of tests the root cause is a mystery.


Tuesday, September 28, 2021

Taking advantage of the morning cool, I continued yesterday's war on weeds, brush, and small trees along the south side of the road. I worked on that until one in the afternoon, took a break to send an email to an electrical expert asking some questions about a magneto battery charger, then drove down to Ponca City to buy a 90º drill chuck at the Harbor Freight store. That should make the job of installing the battery carrier in the runabout easier that it would be otherwise. Today's mail brought the Canon A640 I ordered last week to replace the one stolen at the Old Car Festival. At the family reunion I used my old F-1 film camera, which is fine, but much more expensive to operate than a digital camera. At today's prices for film and processing, the cost of slides is about 67¢ each. The batteries for a digital camera cost under $4 and will take hundreds of photos, making the cost a small fraction of a cent per picture.


Wednesday, September 29, 2021

This was one of those days when I can't think of how I used up the time. There was not one big job I can point to as an accomplishment, just a bunch of little things that added up to a day's activity. I went up to the cemetery and watched the engraver put the date on my cousin Ernie's headstone. It's done with a stencil and a sandblaster. I cut a piece of wood to fill space under the battery carrier I made for the runabout, and bought some screws to install it, but didn't get around to that. I paid a car insurance bill, bought paper clips and a quart of stump killer. I  bought a card for my new camera, and found that I'll have to return it because it doesn't work. It's "compatible with most cameras", but not with mine. With rain in the forecast I rolled up the truck windows, put the mowing tractor in the barn, put the Dixon mower in the shed, and put the runabout in the shop. I did some reading on how to charge a Model T magneto in the car. The day passed and I used up more of the leftovers from last weekend's family reunion. It's a good thing we don't have those very often, or I would turn back into a fat guy.


Thursday, September 30, 2021

The main object of my attention today was the Camry. It was overdue for an oil change, so I did that first. Routine stuff. The sound of steel grinding on cast iron has been telling me lately that it was also due for new left front brake pads. That was not routine. I watched a Youtube video about it a couple of times and went to work. That presented no trouble until I got to removing the old rotor. It was stuck on the hub, and no amount of whacking it from behind with a BFH was about to dislodge it. These rotors have two threaded holes in them. When they get stuck like this you can turn a pair of bolts into the holes and they will press the rotor off the hub. Simple enough. The problem was that the holes take metric bolts, and I had no metric bolts of any size. I would have to go to town and get some. I couldn't go in the Camry of course, with a wheel off and the left front brake dismantled. The Camry was directly in front of the shop, blocking the runabout, so I couldn't take that car. That left the Suburban. I took the new rotor so I could buy bolts to fit, and headed for town. I was in the traffic circle east of town when the car died and would not restart. Turning the key got only a solenoid click, with no starter action. Some folks with jumper cables stopped to help, but the starter remained dead. A police officer stopped and called for a tow and directed traffic around the stalled Chebby while we waited for Ronnie Bruton to arrive with his tow truck. After awhile he arrived and hauled the dead vehicle to my place and left it in the yard. I'll deal with it later. I phoned Pete for a ride, and she took me to town for bolts. With two of the proper sized bolts and an impact wrench the old rotor was off in a few seconds. By then it was past dinner time, so I quit for chow and came back to finish up after I ate. With practice I could probably do this job in a few minutes, like the guy in the video. But this was only the second time I ever installed new brake pads on a Toyota, and it was after eleven when I finally finished up, put the tools in the shop, and put the Camry in the garage.
 

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