Leaf Day 2007

My Tecumsah 2000 Leaf Sucker is out of order. Not sure what happened but I believe that it has something to do with the safety interlock connection to the bag assembly. If that is not in place, the damn thing won't start. I think I can do a MacGyver style repair on it, but maybe I'll just take it in to the repair guy.

So we had to resort to manual labor and we are beat. Thankfully the leaves were dry and light so they were easy to load. But there were so many of them. I took three loads to the dump and I'm going to take one more tomorrow morning.

Back on June 18th, I wrote about power washing the deck and this wayward spacey guy named Brian who came by the house looking for odd jobs to earn a little money.

Today he showed up with his Fiance. They had just been evicted from their apartment up in Mead. He went through a lengthy soliloquy about their hard luck times. It essentially all came down to the fact that they hadn't paid their rent.

He initially showed up while I was on a dump run and Susan was raking in the yard. She told him he would have to wait for me to return. I saw him as I drove up the street and started wondering what was up. Susan told me he was looking for work and we decided we could have them rake a little. We would throw him some money and perhaps a bowl of Chili. We had a whole bunch left over from Halloween.

Anyway, Susan and I where busy loading leaves and we put Brian and the fiance to work in the backyard with a leaf blower and a couple of beers. The fiance didn't seemed very inclined to work and let Brian do everything.

We got the truck loaded and I had to get to the dump as it was approaching Closing time. I didn't want to leave Susan with Brian and the fiance still there. So, I told him I had to get going and he had done enough. I gave him $15.00 and two beers for about 45 minutes worth of leaf blowing...and a little raking.

So what have we learned here today? That I am a soft touch!