First discovery was that my battery was dead, again, somewhat to my surprise since I had removed it from the tractor and fully charged it not that long ago.  Okay, it was probably six months ago, but in my mind it was very recent.   So I threw the charger back on it for a while and attended to some household chores, but as sunset approached I thought I'd best get on my way so I took the charger off, flipped the seat base back down over the battery and bolted it tight, and cranked the engine over.  Fired right up like the fine old girl she is, and I chugged my way down to the station.

Chugged being the right word, too, since last year's remnant of gasoline was looking rather orange in the sediment bowl and seemed to cause the engine to be undecided about what RPM it ought to be running at, or possibly whether it ought to be running at all.   I later noticed that my factory-sealed little bottle of Sta-Bil is still sitting right there near the battery charger where I set it not that long ago, intending to put it in the gas tank before winter.  Okay, it was six months ago, but in my mind it was very recent.  

$63.00 worth of fresh gasoline later, I climbed back up, listened to that familiar rhythm of clank-rattle-rattle-squeak-click-scratch (clutch in, make sure gear shift's in neutral, little tug on throttle, pull out ignition switch, pull back starter rod).   As always, that part sounded great.    But the following "click-click-silence" wasn't so endearing a tune.   #@*&! that battery.

Now, I refer to this place as the "corner gas station," since it is in fact a gas station and on a corner, and I like it because one of the roads that forms the corner is a quiet neighborhood street that links up to some other quiet neighborhood streets, one of which eventually links up with my driveway.  Trouble is, the other road on the corner is a six-lane divided artery two-tenths of a mile from the interstate off-ramp and one-tenth in the other direction from a traffic light at the entrance to the mall, and it turns out I wasn't the only one who'd thought to stop at the gas station this evening.   I was the only one with an old farm tractor, to be sure, but the fact that it was dead silent and blocking one of the service aisles at the station detracted somewhat from whatever cachet I imagined I'd had up to that point.

So I left it in neutral, climbed back off, and proceeded to roll it out of the way.   For a 6000-pound machine, it rolls pretty easily on nice smooth level asphalt, which would have come in right handy if the gas station parking lot had had very much of that.  As it was, I was working up a sweat leaning into one of the rear wheels and inching my way along over potholes and patches, when a young man pulled up in the next aisle and came over to ask if I needed jumper cables.    I thanked him and said yes, that would be terrific, since my alternate plan was to inch my way the remaining two hundred yards or so to where I hoped the neighborhood road sloped down steeply enough and for far enough that I could roll-start the tractor.   So he hopped back in his SUV, pulled around and parked nose-to-nose with the tractor, and got out with his jumper cables.   Then after I showed him that the battery was actually under the operator's seat at the back of the tractor, he patiently drove back around to the back.

By then I'd climbed up to open the toolbox to get the big crescent wrench to loosen the battery-cover bolts, only to be greeted by its distinct absence along with a crystal-clear mental image of it sitting on the bench in my garage where I'd set it about 12 minutes earlier after tightening hell out of those bolts.   Evan (as the young man was named, I later learned), turned out to be more patient and helpful than I could have hoped for and offered to drive me home to get the wrench.   So we made a quick round trip, opened up the battery box, and hooked up the cables.   I realized I'd have to break my rule about never starting the tractor unless I'm in the seat with the clutch in, since the seat was flipped back over and sitting on the jumper-cabled-battery didn't seem too appealing an alternative.  So after making sure it was in neutral with the brakes set I settled for the squeak-click-scratch of throttle/ignition/starter rod, and the Super M fired right up like the fine old girl she is.

Evan said his goodbyes as I said my latest round of thank-yous, and then I bolted the seat base/battery cover back down, carefully put the wrench in the tool box, hopped up on the seat, switched the lights onto Low, released the brakes, and hummed off into the darkness.   Hummed being the right word, too, since that new yellow gasoline flushed the sediment bowl and flowed on down to the carburetor and made it nice and easy for the engine to know right what RPM it ought to be running at.