A Sundial of Happiness

"Larger Nuts & Longer Days"

I was working in a scrap yard during summer
vacation at engineering university. I worked
repairing construction equipment.

One afternoon, I was taking apart a piling hammer
that had some very large bolts holding it together.
One of the nuts had corroded on to the bolt; to free
it I started heating the nut with an oxyacetylene
torch. As I was doing this, one of the dimmest
apprentices I have ever known came along.

He asked me what I was doing. I patiently explained
that if I heated the nut it would grow larger and
release its grip on the bolt so I could then remove it.

"So things get larger when they get hot, do they?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, "that's why days are longer in summer
and shorter in winter."

There was a long pause, then his face cleared.
"You know, I always wondered about that," he said.

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"A Sundial of Happiness"

I was setting up a large, cast aluminum, decorative
sundial in my yard that I had purchased from a garden catalog.

A neighbor, an old Florida cracker, was leaning
on the fence watching my progress and asked, "What the heck's that for?"

I explained, "It's a sun dial, see the sun will hit that
small triangular spike and cast a shadow on the
face of the sundial. Then, as the sun moves across
the sky, the shadow also moves across the calibrated
dial, enabling a person to determine the correct time."

My neighbor shook his head and muttered,
"Huh, what will they think of next?"
Received on Fri Jan 11 07:24:01 2008