Misadventures as Art

A while back Louise and I were down in the shop and I showed her my "collection of shame", parts which had been damaged due to my negligence or stupidity.  A couple of days later, she asked me if she could have some of them for a project.

I had no idea what the project was but I said "yes".  After 48 years of marriage, I know the correct answers to most of her questions.  What she did was to use these as art to decorate our bathroom!

I must say that it is a very unusual choice of items to use as art.  I must describe each of these items.

On the upper left is a 32 penny spike which I accidentally left in the yard south of our house.  Years later, our neighbor, Roy, was doing us a favor by mowing that area.  He ran over the spike, which was at least 75 yards from the house, and threw it through our glass block window in the bathroom.  It traveled across the bathroom into the water closet where it left a deep gash in the sheet rock wall and landed on a small glass table in front of the stool.  Roy felt horrible but I was the one who left it in the yard and he was mowing our grass after all.

The nut in the lower left box was what was left from a trailer hitch which I grossly under designed.  We were returning home from a fishing trip to Lake Taneycomo in Missouri when the hitch failed, letting my boat and trailer come loose and almost roll over.  Ironically, my insurance agent, who was also my fishing buddy was following me at the time and almost had a heart attack!  The nut, which was holding the hitch ball on took the brunt of the incident and was ground almost nearly in two.  It took weeks to get all the asphalt out of the boat!

The large center frame holds a bent connecting rod from our '46 Chevy cabover, known as Butt Ugly.  I drove it to work at Tulsa Winch one day and a rain storm came through.  Well, the engine sits in the open behind the cab but I had no idea that that much water could get through the air cleaner!  When I went out that evening to start the truck, it turned over about twice, fired and then locked up.  The cylinder that that rod was in was full of water and it "hydrauliced", bending the rod.  A week later and some mechanic work and it was good as new.

The item in the right box is the only one not caused by my stupidity but I found it very unusual.  My neighbor, T.J., asked me to replace the PTO seal on his old Ford 600 tractor.  When I got the old seal out, I looked at it and was amazed!  The seal had the original Ford logo on it and the wiper on the seal was made of rawhide.  Early seals used rawhide as the wiper but I had never seen one.

If you get a chance, come by and look at the museum in our bathroom.