SAR Is Not the Belgium Airline

There are some letters when strung together cause fear to wriggle in the depths of your stomach like an eel that has lost his electric power.

It begins with slight movement then quickly escalates to thrashing about like the arms of a presidential candidate as he denies having an affair with his secretary when everyone knows he is lying.

SAR (some assembly required) is one of those and BNI (batteries not included) is another.

SAR came lurching back into my life this week like the stagecoach in the movie Stagecoach that actually was the launching pad for a young actor named John Wayne in 1939. Whatever happened to him?

We had an island installed in our kitchen many years ago at the standard countertop height of 36 inches so it is an eating space and a working space. We purchased two wooden bar stools that were too tall so I used the handsaw Dad gave me a long time ago to shorten the legs to make them fit.

For Christmas this year I gave BW a promissory note for new bar stools of her choosing. It took less time to plan the invasion on D-Day during WW II than it took her to find the ones she wanted.

The ones she wanted only came in two heights: Too short and too tall. She dragged me around like an infant with his favorite binky to store after store until she found some she liked. I had fun riding in the carts at Menards, Lowes, Stolen Furniture on The Cheap, Goodwill and Make Us An Offer Furniture Mart in Calvertville.

Victory was mine when finally at Value City the holy grail of stools was found. The smiling salesman said, "We don't have these in stock, (sounds like the Calvertville Store in 1949) but we can order them and they will be here in two days." Hooray! Break out the nickel nips -- those minute bottles made of paraffin filled with colored water -- and we'll celebrate.

I took the Buick to pick them up to have the maximum space for cartage. When the delivery guy brought them out I was shocked because they were in a very small box. Guess what? When we opened them at home the dreaded three letter acronym yelled at us -- SAR. The pieces looked like they had been packed by a malevolent tornado in Iowa. And there were no directions just a picture or diagram that was as helpful as a pup tent in a hurricane.

Lewis and Clark had an easier time finding their way from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean than we had finding out how all those pieces fit together. There were pieces of metal, bags of screws, bolts and washers and the padded seats, rings, backs and brackets and one lonely Allen wrench. Allen wrenches only do one thing so that was the easy part. We finally got them together and BW observed that we usually have some pieces left over. She didn't see me put two bolts, three washers and one screw in my pocket.

Larry grew up north of Calvertville on a farm and graduated from Worthington High School and Indiana State University. He can be reached at Goosecrick@aol.com or (317) 839-7656. He has written five books.