With yet another typhoon on the horizon this week, I know you are missing our Big Bessie Green the Trampoline stories (If not, please click away now…you’ve been warned). I even had several friends email me to check on her when the last typhoon blew through Okinawa. She was safely stowed for the storm, but not without incident.

The week after school let out, we had flights for a visit back to the states. Matt was already in Arizona attending school, so the kids and I prepped the house. As most of you already know, we have typhoon season here in Okinawa from June through November, so Big Bessie Green the Trampoline had to come down and get her own vacation in the shed before we left the island.

My oldest son and I went out early one morning to tackle her. My fastest solo dismantling time is under an hour, which I set that first summer here when she was up and down faster than a yo-yo during several back to back typhoons. I had high hopes that we could match that time.

Temperatures were already soaring at 8 am, and I was sweating before we even turned the first wrench. We got the net down pretty quickly, with all its cables and bungees, and then we moved on to the poles. There are sixteen bolts holding the net poles to the double bed frame. All we had to do was loosen the bolts and unscrew them from the frame.

We tried to turn the first bolt.

Rusted on. We tried the next one. Rusted. Over and over. After an hour, we had one bolt off. Ransom went to google how to loosen rusted bolts, while I tried not to dehydrate.

“Hey mom, this says all we need is a blow torch!” he called.

“I’d like to be able to put her back up this fall if you don’t mind!” I shouted back. My kids can barely be trusted with Sharpies in the house, much less a blow torch.

Ransom shrugged and picked up the wrench again. We tried all fifteen bolts again, but they were completely seized up. I tried not to panic. I did my own search and found that there was a tool that would miraculously cut the nuts off the bolts. It is called a nut-splitter.

“Ransom! Look, all we need is a nut-splitter,” I said.

His eyes widened and I thought he might choke. “A what?”

“A nut-splitter.”

“Mom, please stop saying that.”

“What? It’s a real thing. It will cut the nuts right off.”

Ransom burst into laughter and several middle-school-appropriate jokes later, we were both in tears laughing.

“All right, all we need to do is go down to the Japanese hardware store and ask for a nut-splitter,” I said.

“And a blow torch,” Ransom added.

“I have my doubts that google translate will be able to handle ‘nut splitter.’ What if it reads it as ‘nut cracker’ or something?”

Ransom was laughing again and I could see that he was going to be no help in the Makeman hardware store. I prayed for the employee who might have to help us.

I took a picture of the tool, and we headed out.

At the hardware store, the blow torches were right on the end cap, easy to find. I steered us past them. We spent several minutes searching the tool wall for the nut-splitter. Finally, at the very bottom, we found it- or them I should say. We realized we hadn’t measured the size of the nut we were splitting, and it mattered. Ransom suggested buying both sizes. I eyeballed it and took a chance.

Back at home, the nut-splitter worked beautifully and two hours later, we had the other fifteen bolts off.

Big Bessie Green is down for the season, and we set a record for the longest dismantling ever: over six hours. I’m pretty sure our prowess? perseverance? qualifies us as professional nut-splitters now. Big Bessie may be missing her bolts, but as usual, she’s revealed who the real nuts are.