The bad thing, however, about that issue is when two guys live close to each other the pranks can sometimes get out of hand. I too (as well confessed in these stories) am one to pull a good joke on anybody at most anytime, and if you get me and Larry going after each other it might get out of hand.

My family carries a long list of jokesters. My mom, my dad, brother and sisters and the whole clan have a history of jokes and pranks. By having family living next door to me and Larry living behind me, this whole area of Hufsmith could become a massive nut house, but…Larry and I have an unspoken agreement that the jokes won't get too elaborate, which is why I was so surprised at him when I thought he had tossed the first grenade.

I brought my John Deere tractor from the ranch in order to do some work around the house. It has a front end loader on it that, up until this point, had always worked in perfect order. It’s one piece of equipment I have not had the chance to break yet. One afternoon I climbed on my tractor, cranked her up and was going to pull some brush from my fence row.

The tractor has a joystick near the right rear fender that operates the bucket. Moving the stick backwards and forwards operates the bucket up and down. Left and right operates the tilt up or down to dump the bucket. On the top of the joystick is a rubber boot that covers the stick and keeps dirt and debris from building up around the base.

As I pulled back the bucket rose in perfect order, but as I tried to tilt the bucket up and down, the stick wouldn’t budge from side to side. Up and down but no side-to-side action on the stick.

“Hmm,” I thought to myself, “this thing was working just fine the other day when I parked it.”

Up and down but again the stick would not move from side to side. After three or four attempts I began to inspect the stick and all other parts around the hydraulics thinking something was locked or had broken off. I studied and studied the tractor to no avail when it suddenly dawned on me.

“Larry,” I thought to myself. “Larry has been over here messing with my tractor. He has pulled a prank on me.” Now I have to admit I felt a little guilty blaming him right off the bat, but I also must confess that I had already thought about pulling a few on him in the past, but never did.

As I continued my study and fiddling around with various parts, I suddenly felt this sense that Larry was probably peeping around the corner of his barn laughing at me! I even looked over toward his house to see if he was looking back at me! This is usually not a good move for men, however, because we never want to give the jokester any satisfaction in seeing the jokee getting aggravated.

I gave in though and surveyed his property expecting him to be peering at me. I then even looked over to my brother and brother-in-law’s houses thinking maybe I was blaming the wrong person!

After a few minutes of pondering my dilemma, I went to my truck and got some WD-40 on the off chance something had rusted up. I really hated to make that walk from my tractor to the truck figuring that Larry was still laughing at me from behind the corner of his barn or garage or some brush pile.

I sprayed a healthy dose of WD-40 down the top of the rubber boot and after soaking it for 20 or 30 seconds I tried it again. Suddenly, as I exerted pressure, the stick freed itself from its bondage and the bucket started working just fine!

As I peered down into the center of the rubber boot I saw the culprit. A dirt dauber had built a nest on the side of the stick, thus not allowing the stick to move freely.

Sorry, Larry! Oh… by the way, Larry has finally manned up and started driving a real truck! He got a Dodge!

Clifford

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