It turns out that my neighbor from the opposite side of the street out here in the country needed some help with his pool yesterday. I’ve had some experience with filters and such, so I was pressed into service.

Just as I was returning from an exercise walk, my phone rings, it’s my neighbor Jim. He explains the dilemma he’s presently having with his pool filter. I’m actually at the mouth of his driveway when I get the call. I tell him I’ll be right over. I walk to my house to check in, the wife is in the midst of fixing a wonderful country breakfast. I let her know the issue Jim is having with his pool, that I’m going to give him a hand and I’ll return in a jiffy, NOT. I get that look, if you’ve been married fifty-five years you know the look.

I walk back across the street and find my neighbor poolside, standing next to the filter outside the pool. He fills me in on what was going on, he can’t seed the guts of the filter properly and is pumping Diatomaceous Earth back in the pool. Jim looks at me and says, ”Linda is going to Kill me,” together for over thirty some years, I’m guessing he knows “that” look also.

I survey the situation, eventually figuring out the flow scheme and how the guts need to fit into a plethora of tubes, few, if any are properly seeded. Jim proceeds to tell me he’s not very mechanical, but if you need your appendix removed he could do that quite successfully. I request a rubber mallet and gently tap all into place. Combined we start to put the lid into place, I proceed to drop one of the wing nuts needed into the bottom of the filter. Once again the entire guts are remove and I go fishing blindly through the murky Diatomaceous earthen waters and retrieve the wing nut.

Slam, Bam, thank you Ma’am, the second try is the Coup de Gras. We check all the connections, hit the start switch and dang if we don’t have clear running water going back into the pool. Jim breaths a sigh of relief, the wrath of Linda shall not come upon him. Jim says thanks, I say “that’s what neighbors do.”

Back home the Mrs, God Bless her, says “two or three pieces of bacon” with my perfectly Butter Scrambled eggs and raspberry spread toast? “Three” I say, and proceed to tell her the pool filter event. All is calm in Dodge.

Fast forward 6 hours and Jim says on Face Book.

OK, so the day started out uneventfully. I was having a problem with my pool filter, no matter what I did the pressure would rise after a couple of hours post back washing. I called my pool service and was told that they don’t do service calls on Saturday. So I called my good friend, next door neighbor, former Marine, retired State Trooper, and all around recognized pool guru.

Linda and I decided to put the leaf net over the pool since the Crepe Myrtles were dropping tons of blossoms into the pool. We couldn’t find any clothesline rope so we decided to use coated wire clothes line rope temporarily to hold the net in place until Monday. All good, right? My wire cutters wouldn’t cut the braided wire very well so Linda suggested using s hatchet to cut the line.

Good idea! But as I was cutting the third length of wire rope I chopped off the tip of my left thumb. Blood flew everywhere and I headed to the house, irrigated the wound for ten minutes, Applied an antibiotic cream, wrapped it with a paper towel, then a second, then a third, and a fourth and still the blood was spewing from the wound. So much for taking daily aspirin. I elevated it above my head to no avail until Linda came into the house, took charge and put a proper bandage on the wound.

Not the best of days, tomorrow I am going to sit in the recliner all day and try not to further damage my body or my psyche. That is all. Hope you had a better day !

I, sometime after Jim’s post, look at the Face Book message Jim posted of the incident, and reply to Jim the following.

You should have called the Marine across the street. Rumor has it he always has a couple hundred feet of Para-Cord on hand, an extremely sharp knife that he knows how to use as well, is always clipped to his pocket. Another rumor I’ve been told is that the knife is so sharp than an Air Force PJ Medic once borrowed the same knife to perform an emergency appendectomy during a remote clandestine military mission.

Obviously this loping off the end of a thumb was not representative of good use of available resources. Lesson learned, when all else fails, call in the Marines. Semper Fi

Just another day in the country!