UPDATE 8/28:

Went back to the pump. Five months to the day and I did the math twice because I dont trust myself with a calendar anymore, March twenty ninth to August twenty eighth, thats five months exact, not close to five, not almost five, EXACT, and I dont put things in caps for nothing so take that as read. The chain from the first photo isnt sitting on the housing anymore. Somebody moved it or it was never separate from the housing to begin with and I already said gold, I already said chain, I'm not walking either word back, I'm saying I finally opened the thing instead of just photographing what was resting on top of it, which is what I should have done in March and didnt, because in March I was still someone who thought looking was the same as checking. March, no, it wouldve been April by the time I actually got back out there with a wrench, I keep sliding the two together in my head, the photograph was March, the opening was not.

There's a wheel in there. Or there was a wheel, teeth around the rim, not links, teeth, and one bulb still lit behind it, thats the orb in the corner of the frame and before anyone writes in, NOT A LENS FLARE, I know what a flare does to a lens and this isnt it, a flare doesnt sit still in the same corner for three more frames. the water heater in my building does the same clicking at three in the morning, has for months, unrelated probly, I only bring it up because I was standing there thinking about a wheel turning somewhere I couldnt see it and it was the exact same sound. anyway. the frame stamped itself 10/21, its not October, I dont fix the clocks anymore, I just keep what they hand me, same as the two clocks I already logged.

Forty teeth on the one I counted at the folio, forty one the second time, I already put both numbers on the folio page back in March and Im not recounting this one to, I dont need three numbers to make the same argument, two was already enough and I said so then. same interval. same ratio. different housing. same teeth. they already knew Id open it eventually. always do.

Didnt put it back together. left the panel open, sat in the truck a while before I drove off. dont know if that matters yet.

Still dont know.

UPDATE 9/27:

Wasnt even out for the pump today. Different corner of the property, the barn with the boarded window I never bothered with because I figured there was nothing behind it worth photographing, just old glass doing whatever glass does in the afternoon. looked because the wire off the post caught the sun wrong and for half a second I thought it was moving. it wasnt moving, wire doesnt move unless somethings pulling on the other end of it and there was nothing pulling, I stood there a full minute making sure. Four ceramic knobs mounted up the post next to that window, old brass hardware, the kind they ran before they buried everything, and I know a wire insulator isnt a gear, Im not saying its the same PART, Im saying its the same shape of problem showing up twice on one piece of land inside one month and I dont think thats nothing. My grandmother had window glass like that on her back porch, warped, made the yard look underwater when you looked through it wrong. anyway.

Three of the four only carry one wire each, comes in, goes out, straight, the way youd expect if somebody ran it once and never touched it again. The third one down, if youre counting from the top and I was, carries two, crossing through the same knob, not routed side by side the way youd do it on purpose, actually crossing, and that means two separate jobs used the same hardware at two separate times and neither one accounted for the other. same as the wheel. forty teeth, forty one the second count, one part of a system doing more work than the rest of it, and nobody builds a thing that way on purpose, thats how a thing gets ADDED TO after the fact by somebody who didnt leave a note.

Still doesnt add up.

Camera still cant tell what day it is either, stamped this one February, 2/14, aint been February in months and it wasnt even October this time which is at least a pattern I recognize, now its just wrong in a new direction, and I dont fix the clocks anymore, I already said that, Im just keeping what they hand me. coincidence, not calling it that. Called it in to nobody, theres nobody to call, wrote it down instead. Same as the panel that got its designation changed after manufacture, assigned once and then quietly doubled up on by somebody else, and yes Im aware that sentence is doing a lot of work for a knob of ceramic and some wire on a barn nobody uses. write in about it if you want. I already know what youre going to say and Im not interested in the version where its just old wiring.

One month since I opened the housing. more than a month actually, thirty days, I did the math. Panels still open, last I checked, from the truck. Didnt bring the wrench today either.