Good Tip

   The Sentinel  A Little Fact and a Little Fiction

I know some of you look to the Sentinel for guidance and advice. I applaud your thinking and your wisdom. One thing you may not know about the Sentinel is that it is not just some guy in his underground bunker in Missouri writing stories about things that are a bother to him. The Sentinel has its west coast bureau chief, Kevin and contributing writers from the east coast to the west.

We are not always political or even serious. We present and you decide if the material is real or not. Today I have to bring you a home improvement tip that has indeed worked for me this very day. I was on the hot line with our west coast bureau chief a couple of week s ago conferring about all the pertinent news of the day and of course Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. They were like presidents of the U.S. a really long time ago.

Anyway, the conversation got around to my excessive drinking. Kevin seems obsessed with that. In order to turn the patter away from my indeed obsessive drinking I mentioned my upstairs bedroom door was hitting against the sill due to the top hinge coming loose and letting the top of the door drop. I have been negligent about removing the door and resetting the hinge into good wood. An old guy appreciates good wood, but chiseling out a spot for the hinge is a lot of work with simple hand tools. At that point Kevin blurted out, “I have the answer for that. Remove the hinge and place a piece of toothpick in the screw opening and then screw the hinge back on with the toothpick in the worn out groove.” I must admit it sounded good and it has been on my mind longer than just about anything these days. I usually forget everything in my short term memory in 60 seconds or less, but this time, this time and only this time it has dogged me for these weeks. I popped the door off the hinge, using my bare foot as a lever to hold up the door while I removed the door from the sill hinge. (I do not recommend using a bare foot as a lever as the bottom of the door dug into my foot and left a deep mark in my foot. It is ok though; I can still stand on the other foot. I put a dab of Elmer’s glue to hold the toothpick in place, (It must be cut off to match the distance to the back of the screw hole,) let it dry for a half hour and then I screwed the hinge back into the sill. I now have a door that closes properly and does not stick against the sill any more. I am elated over how easy it all was, (except for the grooves in my bare foot. Kevin did not mention the safety aspect of putting on shoes). Now I have a door that opens and closes the way a door should.

You can see now why you should always open the Sentinel when you see it in your mail box. Besides the sometimes accurate predictions there may be a good household tip or if nothing else it might be fun to guess whether the editor was sober or not when he wrote the latest edition.

I sincerely appreciate the readers of the Sentinel and the replies I receive from them.