Home Sweet Home February 2011
We were RVing in Northern Louisiana the third week in February, having headed north to get out of the warmer weather and mosquitoes in the south Some folks were working in the state park cleaning up after an ice storm and swept through the previous week. They were picking up downed limbs, and cutting brush. I visited with them and found one to be a park employee, Jim and one the host RV’er, Stan, who got paid for helping out.
“I came up from Grand Isle. We plan to stay here until early March and then head back to Wisconsin,” I said to start a conversation while they took a break, “I was looking for oil spill signs, but didn’t see much other than some tar blobs on the beach.”
“I worked down there for a few years, about 15 years ago,” said Jim. “You know they have had that tar on the beach for a long time. The big oil tankers come in and unloaded from across the ocean and then went out to international waters 15 miles out or so, and pumped in sea water to flush their cargo holds so they could come back and load coal, wheat or corn to take back. Had the problem when I was there, so it ain’t any thing new.”
Stan was from far SW Minnesota, staying at the park for the winter as the campsite host. “I get paid for 20 hours per week, so when there isn’t much going on, I help out with whatever needs being done. My wife and I get a free site for keeping the garbage dumped, the bathrooms clean, and helping out. Makes our winter self supporting without much work. We will head back in April to the farm.”
I picked up some of the brush around our campsite and burned it in the fire ring at our campsite. It was nice to have a fire to sit around even if the wind wafted the smoke my way at times. Margo was cold so didn’t stay out.
A few days later, I awoke with my face very sore, red and swollen. My ear lobes, my cheeks and around the eyes and a little on my neck were itchy and quite blistered. I looked at myself in the mirror; the weeping itching reddened skin looked like poison ivy! I didn’t have any on my hands or elsewhere except just where my cap and beard didn’t cover.
I had seen signs throughout the park warning of poison ivy with pictures of the leaves. In the warm south, poison ivy grows much taller and bigger stems than in WI or MN. This time of year it didn’t have leaves.
I talked to the park ranger. “Oh, you must have stood in the smoke of a brush fire. The ivy gets bigger here and you probably burned some. We don’t burn our brush piles because of that. You better see the doctor.”
Having gotten into poison ivy over on the River Road often, I knew what to do. I bought some antihistamine pills and cream and cortisone cream and started using them. However, my eyes were almost swelled shut; my face badly reddened and sort of raw looking and even my ear lobes were red, itchy and swollen. It usually takes about 2 weeks to get over this. About 4 days into it, I convinced Margo we should head back home in case I needed to go to the doctor (my insurance is good at home; not so good on the road). I was feeling itchy, scratchy, ugly, looking out through eyes swollen to slits. We left on Monday a week before the end of February.
When you drive with older cars, like our 95 Buick, driving on weekdays is best so the towing and repair shops are open. We left early and drove until 10 am, about half way through Arkansas when we stopped at McDonalds for breakfast and coffee.
We were pulling the camper trailer, so have to park in the back areas where there is room for a double vehicle. We came back and the car wouldn’t start—just sort of blubbered at low idle and killed. I looked under the hood, and everything was there, so didn’t know what to do except call for help.
Margo took our new GPS and searched for car repair nearby. Having good luck we found a place only blocks away. We called with our emergency Tracfone and in 15 minutes a roving repair man showed up with his pickup and tools. He tried starting it. “Fuel pump probably quit.” He popped the hood, crawled up on the engine (huge V-8) and turned a little knob behind the fuel injector. “Turn it over” he told me. “No gas getting up here.”
He took a jack, and raised the back wheel off the ground and crawled under the back of the car with a pipe wrench and proceeded to beat on the plastic gas tank. “Try it again,” he said. I let it turn over and then he beat on it a little more. “OK,” he hollered and crawled back out.
“I can’t hear the gas pump turn on when you turn on the switch. Sometimes you can bang it and shake the electric pump motor into running again long enough to get you to a garage or even home. Doesn’t do anything at all. We’ll need to take it to the shop. ”
He took out a chain, hooked it under the front of the Buick and towed us to his shop. Steering and brakes were stiff without power, but worked. We unhooked the camper and then he towed it through a bay in his drive through repair garage. “I don’t have a tow truck, so I just saved you $75 by dragging it with my chain,” he said with a kind smile.
He had a Mobil Gas Station and 4 bays of service lifts and three young fellows working on cars. Brakes, tires and a muffler were being repaired nearby. Our trunk was full of all our camping gear. “I’ll call the GM dealer and find out if your car has a trunk opening that lets you get to the fuel pump. Some cars make it easy to get there with a port hole in the bottom of the trunk.” “No, it doesn’t,” he said a few minutes later as he raised the car a foot or so on the lift.
He removed the gas filler tube and stuck the end of a short garden hose into the tank, gave a suck and stuck the other end into a 5 gallon plastic bucket and began siphoning the gas out. Fifteen gallons later it stopped.
He removed two metal tank shields, then the tank straps and he and another fellow carefully lowered the tank from over their heads. I helped hold it as he unconnected two gas lines and an electrical connection letting us drop the tank to the floor. The younger fellow took over and unbolted the circular port in the top of the tank removing a float connected to a pump mechanism and took the unit over to the table.
The shop owner’s wife had already ordered and picked up the replacement pump motor. The plastic complicated looking pump mechanism unsnapped and let the old pump out. It looked the size of about two C batteries and slipped in a plastic pump housing. He slipped in the new one, snapped it all together including a new in the tank filter and reassembled the tank. Then he put a new fuel filter in the fuel line.
We lifted the tank (still heavy with some gas), and he got the straps in place and secured and everything reconnected; shields on, filler tube reconnected and tested it. Started and ran great. He poured the gas back in and we hooked up and were ready to go with a total elapsed time of 3 hours and $305.
I had watched very carefully as I haven’t changed one myself before (I used to change them when they were $7 and bolted on the front of the engine with two studs and took 15 minutes). I decided that if I have to change this one again or in one of my other cars, I will take my Milwaukee reciprocating metal saw and cut my own porthole in the bottom of the trunk to get at the gas tank. I suppose the trick will be to saw deep enough to go through the trunk, but not deep enough to saw into the tank and blow it up.
We made it home fine after that, seeing snow only north of Des Moines Iowa. Pine Island still had two feet of snow, and more was coming as we got there. Obviously, we should have stayed about 2 weeks longer. By the time I got home, the poison ivy was in retreat and my face was back to its normal beauty. However, I still have an annoying poison ivy cough, shallow breath, and itchy lungs—I read that the smoke can irritate and even damage the lungs. If I climb the stairs to the cabin loft slowly (two steps and rest a minute) I can get along OK—I expect they will either get better or I will get used to breathing a cupful of air each breath.
Margo is headed for a week with her parents in West Bend. I opened the cabin March 1st to get ready for tapping maples – probably mid March. It was nice to see the cabin mouse-free and just as I left it. I fired up the stove and let it thaw out and moved right in. The Super C cranked up right away letting me plow the driveway. Now it is just wait for maple syrup season.
We plan to put out every tap we have this year. My leg is tolerable for walking. I’m not back to pre-break condition, but I find it adequate for most things. (Margo rates me adequate for most things too.). Margo’s back is adequate to carry a 5 gallon pail of sap and there is a chance that son Scott will finish working at the ski resort in time to help out. We didn’t get a lot last year and sold it all at the Eureka Farmer’s market.
