No simple task

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

I’ve written here before about how I have an almost supernatural ability to turn even the most simple tasks into ridiculously complicated situations, but I have a new one…

We had to put my wife’s Explorer in the shop right before Thanksgiving. Not that big a deal — except I somehow lost the only key to my truck. We managed to get by, since all our kids were in town for the hoilday weekend and we could just bum rides with them as needed.

But come Monday, everyone had to go back to their lives. The SUV is still at the mechanic’s and there’s been no sign of my key, so we needed to borrow my Mom’s car for a few days. The only thing is, she hardly drives these days, so she wasn’t sure it would start when I went over to her house to get it Sunday evening. Fortunately, it did struggle but I got it to start and

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drove it back to our house, which is just like two blocks away.

Well, the next morning, it was just the right combination of weak battery and cold snap (I think it was like 27 degrees), and sure enough, when my wife went out to head to work at 7 a.m., the battery was dead — not all the way dead, but just dead enough that trying to start it drained it.

No, problem, right? Just a mior inconvenience. I’ve got jumper cables! I popped the hood on the car and on my truck, which even without a key, has a pretty new battery.

But, the batteries are on opposite sides of the vehicles — and not in the way that would be helpful — so the jumper cables won’t reach. I could normally just move one of the vehicles to remedy this, but, yeah, no key and, of course, dead battery. I actually tried using two sets of jumper cables clamped together but for whatever reason that did not work.

Luckily, I have a portable quick-crank battery charger.

Unfortunately, said portable charger was, itself, dead, having sat under my seat for months… sigh.

So, I took the portable charger, ran an extension cord out to the car from the house, plugged the charger up and basically used my house to jump-start my Mom’s car — which actually worked!

Now, if anyone out there has seen a set of Ford F-150 keys…