I went back to the bedroom, put on my old sneakers, grabbed my lawn-mowing hat and sunglasses, and went to the garage. I opened the garage door by hand. I didn't have an automatic garage door opener. I knew how easy it was to build a transmitter that would open up any garage door. In fact, I had done it during my teenage years while I was goofing around with electronics.
As I gassed up the mower, and pushed it out into the front yard and started mowing, I remembered one summer when I was a teenager when I had created a small garage door transmitter. I found the plans in Popular Electronics, and modified it to generate a range of opening codes. By pressing a red button, the opener would try a whole series of opening codes and frequencies.
My neighbor had a new garage door opener installed a few weeks before. He was quite proud of it. He'd drive up in his car, then press the button on the remote controller, pointing it at his garage door. With a big smile on his face, he'd watch the door open, and he'd drive his car right into the garage.
Well, I remembered as I was mowing the front yard, my home-made opener worked on his garage door controller, but my opener had a few extra modifications. He'd be out mowing his lawn, and all of a sudden his garage door would shut when I pressed the button on my controller. He got pretty mad when that happened. Not noisy, yelling mad. I can still see the expression on his face as his garage door would close, and then open again. Sometimes it would close partway, then open back up. I'd mess with his door just a couple of times, of course. I'd be sitting on my porch across the street, pressing the control on my home-built opener, watching the door go up and down, and my neighbor running into the garage trying to figure out what was wrong.
He'd go into his garage, looked at the opener mechanism, looked in his car at his remote control, and checked the batteries. While he was doing this, I watched him. Then I pressed the button on my control, and watched the door shut with him still inside the garage. Those yells were a bit louder, and not what you would want your kids to hear. It was hilarious to watch for a teenager like I was then.
I finished with my front lawn, and moved the mower to the back yard. I was still chuckling to myself about my neighbor and his 'possessed' garage door opener. And I remembered the other time I went bicycling down my neighborhood street, pressing the button on my control, and watching the garage doors going up and down.
Anyhow, that's why I don't have a garage door opener. Even though I live on a pretty quiet street, no kids, just older couples, I don't take any chances. But it was funny to remember my old home-built garage opener while I was mowing. I wonder where it is now. It's probably in a box in the garage. But no time to look for it now; the memory of it is good enough. And it was a pleasant way to pass the time while I finished mowing.
I put the mower back in the garage, emptying the last of the clippings into the clipping garbage can. One of my neighbors, an older gentleman, had a garden in his back yard. He liked to use my clippings in his compost pile, and I was glad to dedicate a garbage can just for my clippings, along with the occasional biodegradable leftover, that he could use for his compost pile. He really appreciated it. And I appreciated the fresh corn and tomatoes from his garden. His tomatoes had real flavor, not those crunchy, bland tomatoes that you used to get from the store. They were great on a salad, or just with a bit of salt and pepper.
And he had great corn. He'd leave a note on my door when his corn was ripe. I knew the routine: get out the big pot, and boil the water. When the water was boiling, I would go over to his house, and we'd go out and pick out a half-dozen ears of corn. He wouldn't start picking until I assured him that the water was already boiling. The corn would go from stalk to pot in three minutes or less. He always told me that as soon as you picked the corn, it started losing it's sweetness, so you didn't pick the corn until the water was boiling. That was his secret.
I don't know about how fast corn loses that fresh-picked sweetness, but I do know that his corn was the sweetest, most tender corn that I ever tasted. And I've been in lots of good restaurants while I was traveling. Nobody's corn was as good as his. I miss that fresh corn taste now, sitting in my cabin in Foresthill, eating MRE's, away from the Problem. I planted a small garden this year to get that fresh corn and tomatoes. I sometimes spent a bit of time with him in his garden, learning a few things. I still think of him as I tend my own garden here at the cabin.