sarahdodgegeek
The shirt lady
It all started when he had come up to our house last summer after we had a lot of tree damage from a storm. He brought his Craftsman POS. After watching him struggle to start it - let me elaborate - he has a piece of plywood with several hooks in it that he attaches the saw to, then proceeds to pull the air cleaner off to shoot ether in, while he rips & tears on the pull chord like an angry gorrilla, only to not have any luck starting it. He gave up the chainsaw and started to use a bow saw - which, by the way, he is quite skilled with. At the end of the day, he had asked if my husband, Andydodgegeek, would take a look at it to see if it could be "fixed up".
I'm not sure they were actually out of the driveway yet when Andy said 'We're buying him a new saw- I'm not even wasting my time working on this thing.'
We paid a visit to our local Stihl dealer and checked out the MS180c with the easy start option. When the salesman saw Andy with the saw, he said 'A big guy like you will rip that chord right out of that saw.' That's when we informed him it was a gift for my 85 year old father. He said, 'Perfect'. WOW, is that saw ever easy to start! I enjoyed running it the last few months to get it broken in for him prior to the birthday party.
Yesterday was the big day. I gift wrapped a small bottle of Stihl HP Ultra, and handed it to him at the dinner table. He opened it, and said 'Great- motor oil' with a confused look on his face. I explained that the family had gone in together to get his old saw fixed up. His eyes lit up... We brought him outside, opened the trunk, and he looked at me with an expression that said, "That's not my chainsaw". Ah, but it is! He could not believe his eyes. He was like a kid in a candy store. They live in the metro area and have a city park in their back yard. Immediately he wanted to cut down the 3 spruce trees in his front yard (much to the dismay of my mother). After he was shot down on cutting the trees in the front yard, he decided to go back out in the park where he found an 8 inch dead elm tree, and proceeded to butcher it. The rest is history.
I've given my dad a lot of presents over the years... but never have I seen his eyes light up as I did for his birthday yesterday.
Doesn't matter if you're young or old. Who doesn't love a chainsaw?
I'm not sure they were actually out of the driveway yet when Andy said 'We're buying him a new saw- I'm not even wasting my time working on this thing.'
We paid a visit to our local Stihl dealer and checked out the MS180c with the easy start option. When the salesman saw Andy with the saw, he said 'A big guy like you will rip that chord right out of that saw.' That's when we informed him it was a gift for my 85 year old father. He said, 'Perfect'. WOW, is that saw ever easy to start! I enjoyed running it the last few months to get it broken in for him prior to the birthday party.
Yesterday was the big day. I gift wrapped a small bottle of Stihl HP Ultra, and handed it to him at the dinner table. He opened it, and said 'Great- motor oil' with a confused look on his face. I explained that the family had gone in together to get his old saw fixed up. His eyes lit up... We brought him outside, opened the trunk, and he looked at me with an expression that said, "That's not my chainsaw". Ah, but it is! He could not believe his eyes. He was like a kid in a candy store. They live in the metro area and have a city park in their back yard. Immediately he wanted to cut down the 3 spruce trees in his front yard (much to the dismay of my mother). After he was shot down on cutting the trees in the front yard, he decided to go back out in the park where he found an 8 inch dead elm tree, and proceeded to butcher it. The rest is history.
I've given my dad a lot of presents over the years... but never have I seen his eyes light up as I did for his birthday yesterday.
Doesn't matter if you're young or old. Who doesn't love a chainsaw?
