TUSCUMBIA-When I left a local home improvement one night recently my check engine light came on. I had gone there to pick up the wall rock for the screen porch I’m converting into a garden room, but the company had shipped the wrong stone. It was right on the ticket, but the company shipped what they had in stock. I kept telling the guys that it wasn’t what I ordered and they just kept loading. Finally got their attention, then they had to un-load. The light stayed on all the way home, but my truck was running fine. When I got home, I left the truck in the driveway in case it needed to be towed in the morning.
At 4 AM I put the key in the ignition and the alarm goes off and you can hear sizzle of the starter. I called Mom and woke her up to borrow her car to go to work. Later she went over to un-load things out of my truck so it could be towed and the dogs are upset, Patches keeps whining and pawing at her, like what have you done with Momma? They know I went over to her house and didn’t come back.
My truck is almost 5 yrs old, and still has the original battery. After talking Bill in parts and a few other folks, I decide to get a new battery. I arranged for towing in case that’s wasn’t the problem.
When I got home I drove Mom’s car into her garage and walked home to get the tractor so I could get the battery out of her car. The Hooligans think it’s time to eat. After all Moms’ home from work, and she feeds us when she gets home, but since I went in at 4:45 AM, its way too early. Now they are stressed out because I won’t feed them. They are standing around me staring at me licking their chops like I’m their next meal. I told them I’d feed them after I got the battery in. 
I raised the hood on the truck and pulled the tractor up next to it. You know a 4 X 4 truck with 20 inch wheels is tall. Another pet peeve of mine, if you want a nice truck, it comes with twenty inch wheels. If you want to get in and out of the back a few times after a knee replacement and back surgery, you need a tailgate ladder. Lifting a battery up and over the fender wasn’t going to work, so I go and get my step-ladder and position it between the truck and tractor. I lift the insulated cover and I’m met with battery terminal corrosion, at least an inch high! I had it in for an oil change two weeks before, and I guess it was too much of an effort to lift the cover and check the battery.
I get the cables off and look for the handles to lift it out. It does not 
have handles! Who heard of such? I decide that trying to lift it out without handles was going to get that powder everywhere along with matching holes in my clothes. I haul my shopvac out, turn it on and there’s no suction. I take the twenty-foot hose off and it almost sucks in one of the nosy Hooligans. I drag the hose around to the back of the house and start flushing. Out comes a mouse nest minus the mice. That explains why Blackie kept hanging around where the vac was hanging on the wall. After thinking about it while I was trying to un-clog the hose, I decided that battery acid powder and what ever was inside the Shopvac probably wouldn’t be a good combo.
My next idea was to get a small towel and scrape as much of the powder into a cup for proper disposal. I put my work gloves on and cleaned off the terminal as much as possible. Standing up on the ladder I pulled up on the battery and it slips and squashes one of my fingers. Who ever heard of a battery not having a handle? After recovering, I pull the battery out and put it in the loader of the tractor and grab the handle of the new one, and work it over toward the truck.
Break time, hummingbirds are fighting over a feeder, and I felt the need to grab my 
camera and get some photos of them. After a few shots, the Hooligans start hanging out under the feeder. I think they have figured out that I’ll feed them fairly quickly when the chase the birds off. I go back to my battery replacement job, stressing them out again.
After getting the battery in with the terminals in the right direction, I call Bill back and check to see if the positive or negative cable needs to go on last. After getting everything tightened down including the bracket that holds the bottom of the battery in the pan, I put the grenade shaped thing that’s a key now and turn it. The truck starts right up. I was worried since it was dead for over eight hours, my two garage doors and Mom’s programmed into the console would have to be re-programmed, but a push of one of the buttons and hearing the hum of the opener was a blessing. I didn’t feel like crawling up on the ladder three times to program each opener back in.
By now the Hooligans are really getting stressed. Finally they get fed and are happy.
I did find out one useful thing during this ordeal. Take a can of coke and pour on the terminals. It will clean the corrosion off.
The next day when I take the old battery back to the dealer, I stress out the service manager and my sales rep. The company that makes the rock wall material stresses me out when they said it is either take the stock wall rock or wait until the end of October for what I ordered.
