Shopping cart snake

Me Pops could fix a lot of things on drain snakes. Yet there were a few things beyond him; at least one of those you might forgive him his inability to repair.

One day this guy, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, brought in a machine, if you could call it that. The man had cobbled it together apparently with whatever he could find which was even vaguely useful. The motor was from a dryer, the drum looked like a trash can reinforced somehow with long steel rods, and the belt a mere rope tied to fit. It was all bolted upon the frame of an old grocery cart. It looked, uh, ah, er, well, saying it reminded you of a Rube Goldberg is unfair to Goldberg's admitted cleverness. But it worked somehow, at least for awhile.

One day the frame broke. No, it more than broke, it fairly shattered under the weight and the pressure of a spinning 'drum' with a heavy cable. Cloyce brought it in to the Shop for repair. "You'll have to leave it until tomorrow, Cloyce," me Pops explained.

Cloyce wanted it while he waited. "Why can't you do it now?" he demanded.

"I gotta wait until Kroger's closes tonight so I can go steal a shopping cart!" the old man barked back. Then he just told Cloyce to just get the thing outta there.

So maybe it wasn't that he couldn't fix it but simply didn't want the bother.