Pro tip. When your big riding mower has trouble starting, check all the electrical connections. For the last several weeks my big mower has been cantankerous. Slow to start and sometimes unwilling all together. Tired of the effort, I tried to fix it. I changed the plug. Nothing. Yesterday, I changed the oil, and popped in a new fuel filter. Nothing. My son came out and helped. That led to the big discovery.

As I was cranking away and he was standing behind the mower, he noticed sparks beneath the driver’s seat. Seemed a bad place to see sparks. So, I got off, pulled up the seat and cranked it once. Sure enough there was a sparkling light show from a loose connection. The only reason I can surmise the connection exists is to make changing the hot wire on the battery easier if corrosion at the battery terminal sets in. We cleaned the connections, tightened them back down and presto, we were in business.

It’s no surprise the connection came loose. The mower gets a fair amount of work during the summer and some of the ground is hard. I suppose what I should do, as a matter of routine, is tighten things up, say once a month. It takes little effort; I only need schedule it. But like all things of the preventative nature, it takes discipline. Maybe if my work depended on it, I’d do it, but mowing is a necessary evil, and no one gives me a paycheck at the end of the day. Still, big mowers cost money and it doesn’t grow on trees. So, I’m going to try and get in the game. Seems a little late in the day, but I’m pretty sure, as an old dog, that I might be able to figure out this trick, because I really want that mower to last.

John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale