The Gift

Dad was a pretty fair shade tree mechanic for anything with a gasoline motor.

Course, like anybody who turned wrenches, Dad would occasionally run onto a problem he couldn't figger out.

The thing is, Dad would often go to bed with no clue how to "fix" a motor. Next morning at daylight he would have that sucka purring like a kitten with cream drippin' off ever whisker.

I ask Dad about that a time or two and he always said that he dreamed of the solution to engine mysteries?

Related to this, I recently bought a high dollar weed eater for the ranch which included a metal brush blade. The blade worked like a champ til the resident idjut (me) banged it on some rocks and dirt. Then it wouldn't cut hot butter.

I took the blade off of the machinery, got my magnification spectacles and a round file, and commence to hone the hooked tooth choppers of my "tool".

When it was sharp as a "razoo", I screwed her back on and hit the brush patch. Well hell, might as well been whuppin' that stuff with a soda straw. The blade wouldn't hardly even bend grass over?????

Took the blade back off, got a slim honing rock, and inserted it into my trusty Dremel tool to POWER sharpen that dude.

Same story, second verse. Jello would have laughed at my so called "sharpen" job????

Throwed the machine on the barn floor and stomped to the casa with vitriolic words of colorful passion.

Woke up about 3A the next day after the "dream". The ranch hand had put the blade on bass ackwards so that the teeth were pointed the wrong way? Turned the blade over and the only worry was cuttin' my dang toes off????

I know that weren't no rocket surgery, but it made me feel closer to Dad to have a nocturnal epiphany similar to his "gift".