Stone Soup

(Source)

Some travelers come to a village, carrying nothing more than an empty cooking pot. Upon their arrival, the villagers are unwilling to share any of their food stores with the hungry travelers. Then the travelers go to a stream and fill the pot with water, drop a large stone in it, and place it over a fire. One of the villagers becomes curious and asks what they are doing. The travelers answer that they are making "stone soup", which tastes wonderful and which they would be delighted to share with the villager, although it still needs a little bit of garnish, which they are missing, to improve the flavor.

The villager, who anticipates enjoying a share of the soup, does not mind parting with a few carrots, so these are added to the soup. Another villager walks by, inquiring about the pot, and the travelers again mention their stone soup which has not yet reached its full potential. The villager hands them a little bit of seasoning. More and more villagers walk by, each adding another ingredient. Finally, the stone (being inedible) is removed from the pot, and a delicious and nourishing pot of soup is enjoyed by travelers and villagers alike. Although the travelers have thus tricked the villagers into sharing their food with them, they have successfully transformed it into a tasty meal which they share with the donors. (Source)

So what does a wheelbarrow have to do with the old "stone soup" story*.

I'm glad you asked...

As I posted on Sunday, this last weekend was the annual cleaning of The Pond at Chez Sarge, the sans poisson pond as it stands currently. As we labored upon that task for much of the afternoon, I was ready to call it quits for all weekend manual labor activities as the sun dipped towards the horizon. Which is when The Missus Herself announced -

Her: "Remind me that we need a new wheelbarrow tomorrow."

Me: "Uh, what's wrong with the old wheelbarrow?"

Her: "It's broken."

Now I, knowing that this wheelbarrow, which I had purchased some years ago, was a rather sturdy item, I couldn't fathom what she meant by "broken." Had a handle snapped off? Was there a hole in the bed? What could possibly be broken on a wheelbarrow which had sat in the shed since October of the previous year. So I queried -

Me: "How is it broken?"

Her: "Remember the second year we had the wheelbarrow and you had to take it down to Joe's Exxon station and get the tire fixed?"

Me: "It has a flat tire?"

Her: "Yes, there is no air in the tire."

Now I knew that she knew that Joe's Exxon was no longer a going concern. Joe had retired some years ago and no one bought him out so the old Exxon station sits alone and abandoned. Rest assured (you environmentalist types) the gasoline tanks were exhumed, the pumps were taken out and there is naught but an empty lot where I used to refuel the family vehicles once upon a time. It's all very clean and empty now. The building itself is still there, empty and forlorn looking.

But yes, the first spring after a long winter since we had purchased our very first wheelbarrow together (not as romantic as it sounds, I'll get to that in a minute), the air in the tire of the wheelbarrow in question had all gone out. The tire (tubeless I might add) had no pressurized air at all in it (it did have air, it was not a vacuum), making it somewhat useless as part of a wheelbarrow used originally to move large rocks about the estate (when we were landscaping so many moons ago at the turn of the century) then annually thereafter to convey copious amounts of mulch about the estate to where the love of my life wanted it placed. (A tale I told here, many long years ago. Okay, six years ago, a long time for a ten-year-old, not so long for a sixty-something-year-old OAFS.)

Rather than figure out how to get air into a tubeless sans air sous pression tire. I would take it down to Joe at Joe's Exxon. He would know what do do.

I was correct, Joe pressurized the tire, gave it back to me at no charge. Not one red cent did I pay, Joe was old school, great guy. Man, I miss that place.

Before returning to the present day and the tale of the unpressurized wheelbarrow tire, I would like to relate the tale of when we purchased the old wheelbarrow. So, here we go.

Where we live is not far from a hardware store, an Ace (used to be True Value) hardware store. It has been there longer than we've been in Little Rhody, of course in the cosmic scheme of things, we haven't been here all that long. Anyhoo. Once in the early years of our living here, first summer I think it was, The Missus Herself had decreed that the mostly dead grass lawn surrounding the manse would be turned into gardens and other scenic things. As she is the de facto and de jure ruler of my domain, let's just say...

(Source)

(Yes, juvat and I have a certain fondness for that phrase...)

As landscaping was to be done, we needed tools, like shovels, picks, thousands of cheap laborers, pry bars, post hole diggers, rakes, fertilizer spreaders, and yes, at least one wheelbarrow. So off to True Value (now Ace) we went to purchase said implements of landscaping. (I wanted a riding mower, I was told, in no uncertain terms, that that particular piece of kit was out of the question, I could, like my ancestors, walk behind the mower, in thrall to its two-stroke engine and loud exhaust.)

All the stuff we bought fit nicely into the trunk of our sole vehicle at the time, a 1998 Dodge Stratus, save one thing, the wheelbarrow. Hhmm, what to do, what to do?

Now I was much younger back then, and as we didn't live all that far from the hardware store, I handed The Missus Herself the keys to the family chariot and told her to head on home, I would push the wheelbarrow back. Yes, it was uphill, both ways, but there was no snow on the ground and the last saber-toothed tiger had been extinct for some thousands of years, so I felt perfectly safe pushing the shiny new wheelbarrow all the way home.

Which I did. Yes, I got a few funny looks from people driving by, wondering why some loon was pushing a new wheelbarrow up the hill with nothing in it. That's when it struck me...

What if someone saw me and assumed that I had absconded from the hardware store without actually you know, paying for said wheelbarrow? The receipt for this recently purchased wheelbarrow was with The Missus Herself. Someone could, conceivably, alert the local constabulary to the possibility of a wheelbarrow heist in progress and I might have to explain why I had a nice shiny new wheelbarrow but no receipt for said wheelbarrow.

Damn.

As it turned out, no one called the cops on Your Humble Scribe and I arrived safely at the manse, new wheelbarrow in hand. Being all sweaty for my efforts. (I did mention that it was all uphill didn't I?) As I wheel-barrowed** into the drive, I was greeted with this -

"So what took you so long?"

So yes, the purchasing of our very first wheelbarrow as a couple wasn't very romantic, though somewhat humorous in hindsight, save for that uphill part. (The whole way!)

Now there we were some nineteen years later and the wheelbarrow tire sans air sous pression incident was repeating itself. (Deja vous all over again, right Yogi?) But this time there was a couple of differences, Joe's Exxon was no more, so getting him to fill the tire was right out, however, the Internet could quite possibly provide a solution to my sans air sous pression dilemma. And so it did.

(Source)

Wrap a rope around the circumference of the tire, use something to twist the rope, like the old Spanish method of executing miscreants (though without the actual miscreant), one garrotes the tire. So to speak. So Sunday afternoon, I got some rope, a large screwdriver (in lieu of the hammer shown in the picture) and garroted my flat tire. Er...

Actually what this does is draw the tire to the bead on the wheel rim (or is the bead on the tire, or is it both? Hhmm...) and then one can pump air into the tire and it should seal. Which it did. I used my handy-dandy bicycle pump to get a good seal. Now rather than pump the tire up to regulation pressure (something which some New Englanders allegedly have trouble with) with the bicycle pump, or take the tire down to the local petrol station to use the handy-dandy (used to be free now costs a buck) air station, I decided to go ahead and reinstall the thing on the wheelbarrow and pump it up there. Should have worked.

Note the use of "should have worked."

As you might guess, it did not. Damn thing lost all the air as soon as I hooked up the pump. At that point I used some rather colorful Anglo-Saxon epithets and called it a day. I determined to go to the gas station after work on Monday and do it then. (I was under something of a deadline as we had an immense amount of mulch due in on Tuesday.)

Got home from work, grabbed the tire, rope, and screwdriver and headed to the Shell station. Where I failed utterly to introduce pressurized air in any usable quantity into the wheelbarrow tire. Sorely vexed I was.

So off to where I bought the wheelbarrow (was True Value, now Ace), figuring that as they assemble wheelbarrows for selling to the landscaping public, surely they could rectify my sans air sous pression dilemma.

Apparently the manufacturers ship unassembled wheelbarrows to Ace with tires that either require no pressurized air or are already correctly inflated. I dunno.

Upon arrival at Ace, I waved my depressurized wheelbarrow tire above my head and inquired as to the possibility of getting my dilemma rectified. Two ladies at the front registers said that, "Yes, yes we can. Surely Tyler can do that. Let me page him." (Or words to that effect.)

Unfortunately Tyler informed the ladies that no, he couldn't do that, the store has no air compressor. Yes, c'est dommage.

While the ladies apologized profusely for their error in heightening my expectations, I told them. "Not to worry, I have a Plan B. I'll be right back."

Taking the tire to my vehicle and depositing it therein, I then returned to the store. As I walked in I headed past the ladies and straight back to the wheelbarrow section. Selecting the model depicted above, I returned to the registers and announced, somewhat dramatically, my intention to purchase said wheelbarrow. Which gave the ladies something of a chuckle (which had been my intent). Also the senior of the two ladies told me that as they had misinformed me as to the store's air compressing capabilities, they would knock five dollars off the price of said wheelbarrow.

Gladly I assented and purchased the aforementioned wheelbarrow. This time I did not have to push it home (uphill all the way) but realized that it would actually fit in the back of Big Girl, my Honda Element. All I need do was lower the back seats to their horizontal position, load the wheelbarrow up, and head home.

Much to The Missus Herself's delight, she loves her new wheelbarrow. I felt, so proud...

Anyhoo, what does that have to do with Stone Soup Sarge, huh? What does it all mean in the grand scheme of things.

Glad you asked...

The Missus Herself, the overseer of all landscaping projects at Chez Sarge uses the "stone soup" method of announcing a task, some might call what she does "mission creep." I would, but not within earshot of the love of my life.

It kinda goes like this -

Her: "Saturday we're going to clean the pond."

Saturday dawns and we commence to cleaning the pond.

Her: "While we're out here, I want to rearrange these heavy stones which are the basis for the waterfall."

So we do that, then there is fertilizer to be relocated from her car to the back yard.

Then there are leaves to rake up along the fence line, then there is a wheelbarrow issue to be resolved...

Like I said, "stone soup."

Still and all, I wouldn't trade my existence for any other...

Now if you would excuse me for the nonce, I need to go call the TruGreen guys to reschedule them and then call the lawn mower guys to awaken them from their winter slumbers and see if they will come cut the grass this week, and then, and then, and then...

Don't eat all the stone soup before I get back.







* Said tale, FWIW, when told to me as a wee bairn was called "rock soup." Stone, rock, what's the difference? Ask Peter.
** Not to be confused with this.