When all else fails...

...READ THE DIRECTIONS!

Okay, there's the thing.  I know one of these days my daughter is going to come for her “Red Flyer" wagon.  When she grew up and went out on her own she took almost all of her possessions with her. At that time I asked what she wanted to do with her childhood Little Red Wagon.  She told me she wanted it, but could she leave it for a while.  So for years I used it for gardening hauling plants, rocks and dirt hither and yon about the yards.

Last year when I sold the house and moved I again inquired if she still wanted her "Red Flyer", she said she did and would take it with her next time she came to visit.  At the moment it is in my new garage along with some boxes of 'stuff' I still need to unpack.

Last week apparently my mind must have had a little time on its hands because while thumbing through a catalog from a company I'd never heard of before I saw an item that intrigued me.  The headline read: Platform cart moves heavy objects with ease.  The picture looked great and the description sounded even more wonderful.  I needed this cart. Amazingly it only cost fifty bucks.

Oh, yeah, I had to have this cart.

I went on-line and ordered it, bingity, bangity, boom!

It arrived late Monday evening so I didn't unpack it until yesterday. WOW!  I was very impressed I had actually bought something useful.  I gotta' say it met my expectations and more.  However, I found I did have to put on the wheels so put off the assembly until today.

This morning I take the Folding Hauling Cart onto the patio, open my tool box and set to work.  I found I had to decide if I want to 'push' or 'pull' the cart because that depended on where I put the swiveling wheels. Shoot, I rather expect I will be doing both and contemplated putting one of the swivel wheels on the front and one on the back....until I figured out that would probably make the cart go in a constant circle.  

In the end I put the swivel wheels on the front.  I was concerned that perhaps some of the screws might give me trouble, to my amazement each one went in perfectly.  The directions indicated I should use a wrench to tighten the screws but I didn't keep one of those when I got rid of the tools in my house garage so I substituted a pair of pliers instead.  The pliers did the job quite well.

With the last wheel installed, I flipped the cart right side up to give it a go.

Uh-oh.  I tried to pull up the handle and it would not budge.  Oh, the springs wanted to work but the handle would not go into the upright position no matter how hard I pulled.  Dang it!  This thing was broken...and I took to cussing in my head.  I had already completely destroyed the package it came in, Now I was going to have to come up with some kind of container to ship the cart back...all the way to Maine.

I stewed, I fret, I yanked and pulled at that dang handle.  The instructions didn't say one single thing about 'how' to pull it up.  

Then I read the instructions on how to put the handle down. HOT DOGGIES! The direction was a little vague, "Hold the foldable hauling cart against the wall or any firm background and push the release bar down to fold down". Release bar....where the blankity, blank, blank is the release bar.  I could not find that anywhere.  I checked around the area of the springs that so badly wanted to work, and once I got my nose close enough I spied a piece of white paper wrapped around a bar connected to the springs.  I saw the writing on under side of the paper and turned my head until I could read the words...RELEASE BAR!  

Following the instructions for putting the handle down, I pushed my cart against the side of my apartment and gave a firm yank expecting that handle to jump into place. Dirty double dang that didn't work. Sigh. Back to the instructions I went but unfortunately I had read every single word. I got nuttin'.  

Enter Frankie.  "So, how's it going?"

Me:  "Grrrrrrrrr!"

Frankie:  "That good huh?

Me:  "Grrrrrr!"

I explain my problem and show her the release bar using my foot pressing down on it. The bar lowered a bit.  What the heck????  I applied a little more pressure and the bar lowered even more. With my foot still applying pressure to the bar I bent over and grabbed the handle (insert Angels singing here) the handle came up. Halleleujah! At this point there was a lot of hugging and jumping around going on.  I had done it, I had figured out how to use my cart.

Of course, there is a moral to this story:

When all else fails, it definitely helps to read the directions.  Then again, sometimes it's a little dumb luck that finally gets the job done.