Save Ottumwa Post November 23, 2022

When a person gets older, their body starts to fall apart. My wife and I stay active with assorted outdoors activities, but even with exercise, time takes its toll. Something always seems to hurt or break from even such minor activities as falling down stairs. Last week, my wife developed a pain in her back. I was secretly glad that I was not the only one with infirmi ties but concerned my main fishing and outdoor partner would be out of commission. Fishing, mushroom ing, and just about all other sports are more fun with a partner. She was checked out by the local physician and pronounced moderately gimpy. She could not lift anything for a while, which rules out load ing the boat before I get home from work. Worse yet, she could not run the vacuum

cleaner. I thought this a bit strange but was willing to go along with the doctor’s orders. I have not done a lot of vacuuming in my days, but how hard could it be. The machine is even somewhat selfpropelled. Monday is the day the house gets cleaned. After a week end of kids, friends, rel atives, and dogs romp ing through the house, the floors do get a bit crusty and gritty. When I got home, everything was done except the vacuuming. I asked my wife where she wanted me to go and much to my surprise, she said, “everywhere”. I can understand the high traffic areas such as in front of the back door where everyone and everything that comes in loses most of their outside dirt, but hardly anybody went down the hall, and only two of us were in the bedroom. How dirty could two people make a bed room. I got that look like, “everything needs vacuumed” and started out.

Prior to this expe rience, I thought vacu um cleaners were just a noisy necessary evil used to suck up dust and dirt. I soon dis covered, they are not only noisy and evil, but they will also hurt a per son. The self-propelled feature means the

machine will take off, either forward or back wards, with the slight est provocation. I tried not to provoke it, but as soon as I hit the on switch, it raced back wards over my bare foot. Hard little spin ning wheels and beat ing brushes cleaned my foot of any dirt that may have been there, plus the first layer of skin. Cursing over the roar of the machine, I pushed the handle forward and it slammed into the couch. Up to this time, the dog had been eye ing me suspiciously. A noisy machine, run by a madman, was eating the couch and he knew he was next. He ran from the room in ter ror. He is a fairly large dog, but I did not see him again until several hours after I was done. I do not know where he hid, but he did a good job of staying clear away from me and my roaring monster. He must have been on the top shelf of the closest, as that is the only place I did not go with the vacuum cleaner.

When I complet ed my task, I stopped to admire the fine work I had done. Sweat was glistening off my brow and trickling down my now sore back. Sur prisingly, I think that doctor had been right about this job being hard on one’s back. I have dragged three-

hundred-pound deer out of twenty-foot ditch es that did not hurt my back like this. It also makes a person’s feet sore, scares the dog, and marks up the furni ture. I am not so sure cleaning is such a good thing. I know I will con tinue to run the monster

machine until my wife gets better but have a better understanding of what house-cleaning is about. I also know, if I need help dragging a deer, for my wife, it would be an easy job after running that vacu um cleaner.

The Domesticated Outdoorsman