There is nothing as fraught with impending complications as the comment “This will only take a minute.”

SIMPLE PROJECTS

I said, “Shorty, how’s yer day been goin’?”

He looked at me suspiciously, like I’d been readin’ his mind, then answered, “Where do ya want me to start?”

Shorty’s old cake-feedin’ pickup had broke down the night before. That meant transferring the cake feeder to his other pickup. “No big deal,” he told Maxine. He’d have it done in twenty minutes. It only required drilling four holes in the bed of the new truck to bolt on the feeder.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll start supper.”

The feeder fit perfectly. “This is gonna be quicker ’n I thought,” he congratulated himself. With that, he fired up the drill and bored a hole through the side panel—into the gas tank!

There must be a blank spot in our brain that allows us to forget how often we screw up the simplest project. And the simpler it seems, the longer, more complicated, and more frustrating it becomes.

I laid out my fence line and dug postholes every eight feet. I reached the last hole next to the lane. My gate measured perfect across. About six inches down into that last hole, I hit a root the size of Mount Rushmore. Now the gate looks like a crooked picture frame.

I’m regularly led, unsuspecting and confident, to slaughter. Ignorance of the task at hand probably is my greatest strength. What could be simpler than putting in a drip sprinkler, replacing a starter, wiring a tank heater, cutting your friend’s hair, building a feed box, running propane to the bunkhouse, or splicing fog lights onto the new pickup?

I’ve been working on my old stock trailer. I bought four new “used” tires. Three lugs broke off the right rear wheel. It took four hours to replace ’em. I rewired the trailer, then backed the pickup close enough to plug it in and test it. It worked! I put up my tools, jumped in the pickup, and pulled away—jerking the wires out clean back to the axle.

It took me all day to put plywood over the floor. I cut and measured, trimmed and fit it to precision. I secured it with ten pounds of drywall screws, then soaked it with linseed oil. It raised the floor three-quarters of an inch. Beautiful job! Now the tailgate won’t close. It lacks half an inch of clearance.