Vaughn C. Hardacker
Vaughn Hardacker here: It’s January, the longest 31-day month in the year. It is also our coldest month and the one with the most snowfall. There’s another fact about Maine winters that many people experience, but no one seems to talk about. Have you noticed that if anything is going to break down, it happens in winter!
For example. When we had our first measurable snowfall, I tried to start my snowblower. It started, but didn’t seem to respond to either the accelerator or choke. It would idle for several minutes and then stall when I tried to use the auger. The gas in it had been left over from last year, and I figured I might have bad gas, so I let it idle until it used up all the old gas. Fortunately, my neighbor had two machines and offered to let me use one until I could get it looked at. After three storms, it was becoming a bit of a hassle to borrow their machine after each one. My decision to take it to the repair shop led to another problem. The machine was too heavy for me to lift into the back of my pickup. I do own a trailer, no problem, right? Wrong. The trailer was behind my storage shed, buried under three feet of snow. I decided to take a chance, engaged the four-wheel-drive in my pickup, backed through the snow, and, after four tries, lined the truck and trailer up. I shoved the snow away from the hitch and cranked the trailer down until it sat on the ball. Then I cawled through the snow and dug out the snow under my truck by hand so I could attach the safety chains and plug in the trailer lights. Finally, I had the trailer out of the snow and into my drive, lowered the tail ramp, and loaded the snowblower.
I had no issue driving the seven miles to the repair shop owned by a fellow named Hewett, called The Stubborn Swede. We got the machine inside, and he started it. The motor was still running like s–t, and he told me that if I wanted to wait, he’d take a look at it. When he took the covers off, we got quite a surprise. The carburetor was the problem … or what was in it was. The carburetor was packed full of bird seed! How it got there is still a mystery. However, my loving partner, Jane, is the greatest animal lover on Earth. Several years back, I hit a moose. It was a glancing blow, and the animal was lying in the ditch on the opposite side of the road. I inspected my truck to see if it was drivable and saw Jane walking toward the moose, which was getting to its feet. “Where are you going?” I asked. She said, “It may need help.” My reply: “You are approaching an 800-pound animal, which is without a doubt not happy. The last thing it wants is our help.” She had no thought of the danger she was in by approaching the moose. All she saw was an animal in need.
Back to my snowblower. Jane feeds every animal in northern Maine. She fills at least a half-dozen bird feeders and two bowls of sunflower seeds for several chipmunks. She stores seeds in our garage. The only thing that we can figure out is that one of her critters (anyone out there recall Ellie Mae Clampett?) was storing food for winter and stuffed the carburetor full. Hewett told me he would have never thought a carburetor could hold that much seed.
The snowblower is now working fine. Next item to crap the bed: One of the headlights on my truck went out. Not a big deal, you remove three screws, and the assembly pulls out, allowing you to insert a new LED. Minor thing, but just one more source of aggravation.
Now that the headlights are functioning. The radio in the truck stopped working. Most people would say, no big deal, you don’t need a radio to drive. Wrong. You could remove every TV in my house, and it wouldn’t bother me. My Sirius Radio is another matter. A bit of history. I grew up in a crazy, dysfunctional house. My only refuge from the craziness was my room, my books, and my radio. In my world, a radio is not just another entertainment device — it is an essential item that helps me maintain my sanity (well, at least fake it). I took the radio to the local dealership to see if they could fix it. They looked at it and said, “The radio is fine. But, your Audio Control Module is bad.” In a Ford F150 truck, the Audio Control Module is the radio, CD, and Satellite Radio combined in a single box! I asked how much it would cost to fix it. $875.00!!! I told them I couldn’t afford that. They charged me $180.00… they did, however, wash the truck. Have you ever paid that much for a car wash? Thank god for YouTube and eBay. I found a company in Virginia that repairs ACMs, and a YouTube video showing how to remove it. I sent it off for repair for just over $100.
Finally. Yesterday Jane and I went to Lowe’s. She tripped in the parking lot and fell face-first onto the pavement. Six hours and eight stitches later, she looked like she’d been in a brawl with a professional wrestler. It didn’t help that she has a sense of humor like mine. In the emergency room, we met a friend of mine all the way back to junior high school. She said, “Look what Vaughn did to me.” I knew he was recalling my reputation back then. All I could do was stand there in my Vietnam Veteran hat and USMC sweatshirt, shrug, and smile. I’d have been convicted in any court in the country.
Did I mention that I hate winter?
Only 56 Days until the Spring Equinox!
—that you can see what needs to be told, what detail will make your readers see.
Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Dick Cass (Monday) John Clark (Tuesday), and Vaughn Hardacker (Friday) with a writing tip on Wednesday from Matt Cost and a group post on Thursday.
There’s a lovely short recording of This American Life‘s Ira Glass talking about the gap between taste and ability early in a creative practice. It’s good. 
