A loose nut looking for loose nuts

I spent part of Friday and Saturday cutting brush and piling it by our chipper-shredder, a venerable 5-hp machine about 20 years old.

Yesterday I started chipping the brush and almost immediately had a jam. Take off chute, pull and pull on jammed piece, it just won't budge. I went to get another tool and tripped over the box holding the nuts and washers. The nuts and washers disappeared into a thick layer of chips, grass, and twigs.

OK, pull out my magnetic wand that I use to take off and put on a washer-lock washer-nut group that is rather difficult to reach next to a hot engine. I wave it around and nothing comes up.

I have another magnet on the stick about the size of a hockey puck. I wave it around and click - a washer. I continue and click, click, and click. Hey, I have two thirds of what I need. Then nothing more comes up.

I look in the tool shed for some of these nuts and washers. Nada! I guess they are all in Duluth.

I go back to the chipper-shredder and start pulling up twigs. After about four handfuls I see the last nut and washer! Right where I had been squatting before.

I work out the jammed twigs with the pliers I had gotten up for, put the chute back on, and crank the chipper-shredder up. I'll save you the agony of reading how many pulls starting took, but off it went.

I stuffed and stuffed small branches into the maw. Poof, the chips came shooting out the chute. The pile gets smaller and smaller; my back gets stiffer and stiffer. I tell myself to continue until the chipper-shredder runs out of gas. I chip all the green stuff and begin on that left over from winter. Stiffer and stiffer, when will this thing stop?

Then I throw in a piece that I know will stop the machine, hoping it wouldn't stop the machine. Or maybe hoping it would stop the machine. It stopped the machine. Hooray! Straighten my back with much creaking and groaning. Leave the jam to another weekend. I'm going to sit under a tree with a book.

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