it was late in the day already, but I was determined to get those two deep holes dug for a couple of sign poles I needed to get in the ground.
But, when I went to start our 35 horsepower Massey Ferguson tractor, the engine wouldn’t even turn over.
Not to be deterred, and still committed to getting those posts in the ground and in concrete so we could hang our customer’s sign later in the week, I brought my truck around back to the tractor and jumped it off. Since I wasn’t going far, I figured I could just keep it running until the job was finished and I had it back on the trailer.

Now, anyone who has read these “Trenches” articles knows, that at least for me, if anything can go wrong, it probably will (the principle of Murphy’s Law was first discovered and documented by great, great uncle Murphy Walsteen Williams), and that if luck has anything to do with what I’m doing, I’m likely to be in big trouble. It would be the same with this job, because after unloading my tractor, I proceeded to dig the first hole only to find that I was also digging through a layer of thick old asphalt buried just a few inches below the gravel surface I had seen on top of the ground.

It took a good while to dig the first hole, but the second hole was even worse. I had nothing to pry at the ground with since I wasn’t in my regular truck, so breaking all the rules, I left the tractor running and went back to the auger—carefully grabbing its mast a couple of feet behind the gear box and bit. I wobbled it back and forth to try to get it to dig into something.

I worked and worked, and it spun round and round, but I was having no luck at all. At least that’s how it seemed. Then when I started back toward the seat of the tractor, with the auger still turning, my luck took a totally unexpected and unprecedented change. The drive shaft on the auger broke completely loose!

Bad luck? No, that was good luck. Why? Because I wasn’t standing next to it when it threw the bolt that served as a pin holding the U-joint to the gear box on the top of that auger unit. And the driveshaft didn’t break one or both of my legs when it started flopping around on the ground where I had just been standing.

And that was only the beginning of this change in fortune. Once I noticed what had come loose, and now working in the dark by flashlight, I was actually able to find the bolt that had flown off when the old nut backed away and disappeared into the night sky. I shrugged thinking that I’m never that fortunate, and then when I found in the small tool box on the tractor itself, a replacement “nylock” nut of exactly the right size, I could hardly believe it.

Within a minute or two, I was back in business, and both holes were dug.

Later that evening, I had to install some vinyl lettering on a glass door of a customer in the dry cleaning business way out passed the city limits. One of the staff had plotted and taped over the graphics for me, and had noticed a damaged S only after the transfer tape had been applied. So I had been given a couple of extra S’s so I could make the swap after the bulk of the lettering had been installed.

However, after I had squeegeed the graphics down, and went to remove the premask, I must have missed rubbing down one letter in these several lines of copy, and it tore when I removed the transfer tape. Oh no. Several miles from the shop and a plotter, and I have torn a letter through my own carelessness! What a pain! Or so I thought until I realized that I had damaged the only letter in that whole job, the only character in the alphabet, that I had a spare for. It was the letter S, and in the same exact size as the one I had two duplicates of. How in the world could I be that… dare I even say the word— “lucky”?

The next work day was a Monday, and it was one day before the 15th when payroll taxes and other major bills had to be paid. We were desperately needing the $12,000 that a corporate client owed us for work we had done for them and had been having a hard time collecting. It was an accounting problem, of course, and we had been told the check was in the mail.

We were at the financial meltdown point, and that check would make all the difference in the world. And when the mail came, guess what? The check was actually in the mail! Unbelievable!

As you might imagine, I am totally dumfounded by this change of fortune, this string of undeserved favors, this way of operating that is totally foreign to me. I feel like Charlie Brown after Lucy finally let him kick that old football, a good solid kick, straight through the uprights.

Of course, by next month, I’m sure things will be back to normal. Murphy’s Law, if not uncle Murphy himself, is alive and well, and will no doubt return with a vengeance. But for now, I can’t complain here in the “Trenches,” and I hope you’re also having your best month ever, even if our 401K’s are not.

Oops, I forgot about that one. In the big picture, I may be losing money faster than I’m making it, so things may be normal after all!

Oh well, can’t have everything I guess.

Have a great month, —Rick