Observant Joe

Me Grandpa Joe had a way with words. In fact, Joe's ability to make the word hell declarative of many and varied emotions would find its modern equivalent in I am Groot, if that means anything to you. Trust me, the analogy fits.

Be that as it may, his use of language could actually be rather profound even in areas where mild expletives were not at all involved. I doubt that most of my cousins or other family members knew the pleasure of hearing Joe remark, when leading into a happy explanation or in demonstrating a welcome development, "Please observe."

Grandpa Joe said that whenever he had found a solution to a vexing problem at the Shop. We had our share of vexing problems at the old barn, believe me. But to cut through to the point here, if a particular issue had been tormenting us for many hours (or sometimes days) it sounded delightful to have Joe stop you and say those two simple words, please observe. It meant a problem was solved.

I thought of that a few days ago as I solved what had been a recent vexing problem involving a snake repair. Try as we might, neither me brother Phil nor I could get a piece of threaded pipe, the leg of a machine which sits as a tripod, out of the body of the unit. The leg had broken off flush so that there was nothing to grip it.

At a hardware Phil had discovered a tool to extract the broke piece yet we could not get it work. In desperation, as I didn't want to heat the body of the snake for fear of making things worse, worried that if I made it worse the ornery thing would need a body as well as a leg (and who knows how long that would take, our supply lines being disrupted by COVID) I heated it anyway, carefully. Within a few minutes, lo and behold, I used that tool that Phil found and walked that broken pipe right out of the body of that machine.

I could hardly wait to tell Phil "Please observe," as soon as he got back to the Shop. I had to channel my inner Joe Cosgriff for full effect.