Man & Machine Rockland man’s mechanical expertise born of necessity

You set out to mow your lawn, and the mower’s handle drops off. An old flame is about to visit and the music box he gave you has stopped playing your song. You’d like to sew up a storm, only to have your sewing machine seize up. Everyone knows what it’s like to be in a fix from time to time. The question is how to get out of it. Whom do you turn to to find expert fix-it people? Rosemary Herbert plans to find out in her new “In a Fix” column, which will run monthly in the Living section.

When I decided to get my lawn mower repaired at last, I simply thought I was taking care of a task I’d put off for far too long. I had no idea the decision might have saved my life.

Like many Mainers, I turned to a local fix-it man for help. In a state where 10 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, and many of the rest need or choose to be frugal, we are blessed with an abundance of people who know how to fix everything from practical machines to cherished collectibles. In the months to come, the “In a Fix” column will introduce readers to the best of them.

Since it led me to one of Maine’s finest fix-it men, let me tell you about my green machine. I could say I acquired it in the interests of the environment. Powered by electricity supplied through a very long, neon-orange, indoor-outdoor cord, it delivers neither the noise nor air pollution typical of gas-powered machines.

But this is not the whole truth. Much as I like the idea of an environmentally friendly machine, I was more eager to have this one because it was free. Some neighbors who were moving could not fit it into their moving van and simply gave it to me.

Even if the neighbors had not been so generous, I’d have purchased a mower like this one. You see, I really did not want to deal with the dangerous details of acquiring and pouring gas into my lawn equipment. I preferred the nuisance of flipping the electric cord out of the mower’s path. At least I wasn’t quaking with gas can in hand.

I’ll admit it. Mine is a lawnmower fit for a wimp. Not only that but I failed to maintain it for some seven years. Never mind that the rubbery foam on the handle was deteriorating and the handle itself was duct-taped in place after the screws that should hold it to the machine went missing. Amazingly, the un-oiled, unsharpened, screwless thing still ran.

But that does not mean I wanted a wimp to look the thing over when I finally decided to get it fixed. I asked around to find the best man for the job. Everyone told me I should turn to Bert Vanorse. I found the 83-year-old mower whiz in his machine-part-packed Bert’s Machine Shop at 11 Bay View Square in Rockland.

Clearly, Vanorse has seen it all when it comes to mowers. His customers include everyone from those who guide power riders around the sweeping lawns of the midcoast’s estates and businesses to, as Vanorse put it, “People like you who are nervous” about putting gas into a machine.

“But, if I was you,” he told me, “I’d be more nervous about what you’re using now.”

Before I could conclude this was due to the duct tape, he elaborated. According to Vanorse, electric lawn mowers are inherently hazardous, due to the potential for electric shock. “I don’t want to make you nervous,” he said, “but you could even be killed. If, say, your cord is running through a patch of grass where there’s mildew or some damp, and you are standing on the ground with two hands on the machine, you are grounded and the shock can run right through you.”

Even if one is very careful with checking the cord for wear, “the current runs along on top of the wire,” he said, “not through it.” The only way to prevent electrical shock in that case would be to operate the mower with one hand only, a process that seems both laughable and impossible on a lawn that is far from entirely flat.

Vanorse’s solution for the gasoline-pouring-challenged (especially one with a limited lawn) is to try a sweat-powered, hand mower. He even said he’d let me try one his family owns before I spend money on one for myself.

There’s no doubt Vanorse is generous by nature. And he told me where this generosity comes from. This son of a sardine factory worker was raised in Rockland’s Sea Street neighborhood at a time when boys from that area were shunned by the sons of better-off families. “They called us ‘the Sea Streeters.’ We could kick hell with ’em, but we couldn’t play with them,” Vanorse remembered.

“There were three of us boys home,” Vanorse said, and a couple of siblings in Rhode Island, too. During the frigid dockside winters, he spent many hours in the Rockland Public Library, looking at books about machines, while keeping warm there.

He left school after completing the sixth grade to work “at anything that would bring in money,” he said. One of his jobs entailed checking cans for leaks in a factory that “sealed 160,000 cans each day.” For this, he was paid a princely 32 cents per hour. He also worked for Front Street Lime Co. in Rockland, dumping lime into kilns. He later served in the military in World War II. While stationed in Boston and Portland, he took up guitar playing and song writing – two passions he still pursues in his free time.

But it was at Bicknell Manufacturing Co. in Rockland that he learned skills that prepared him to open Bert’s Machine Shop in 1955. To this day, he is known to lobstermen for the trap-hauling pulleys that launched his business, and to fishermen for the cutting gaffs he produces for them. He also makes metal brands that are used to mark boxes, equipment and even lobster buoys locally and nationally.

And then there are the lawn mowers. After repairing several for other businesses, he decided to make this another sideline. For some of us, his sense of humor is as memorable as his repair skills.

“Where would this country be if they stopped making duct tape?” he said, of my pitiful machine.

Then this multitalented machinist revealed the secret to his success. “I don’t want to come off as a braggart,” Vanorse said, “but I live off what I can do. If somebody asks, I’ll say, ‘I’ll try.’ If I say ‘I can do it’ and I can’t, I’m a damned fool!”