Government must have hands in summer plans

Government has many ways of affecting our level of happiness. IRS audits are hardly pleasant things, but it’s the small stuff that pecks away at our overall sense of contentment.

When we spend a summer afternoon in the backyard we are beset with government-borne inconveniences. Like mosquitoes — they are everywhere.

For instance, what happened to gas cans? They used to be no hassle at all and the fuel would flow freely out of the nozzle and into your lawn mower. No more. Government decided gas cans could no longer have vents as of 2009. It was a measure designed to prevent spillage. Now it prevents the pouring of gas at a reasonable rate. Inevitably, the victim of the gas can over-regulation will pierce the can or jerry-rig it in some way as to cause more spillage than the cans could before they were spill-free.

Until very recently the act of getting the gas into the can or into the car was also a pain. Massachusetts banned holdopen gas clips at gas stations in the 1970s. For years you’d have to stand there and force the big, rubbery nozzle into the tank or can. We were the only state in the country to ban the great nozzles people in the other 49 states enjoyed. Unbelievably, our government’s reasoning for the ban was the risk of the driver setting the clip and sliding back into the front seat — thus picking up a static electricity charge. Then, the driver goes back to the nozzle, touches the metal part, which causes the static charge to spark around gas fumes, and then BOOM! How often could that have been happening?

Anyway, we got our hold-open gas clips back in 2015, when the government decided to stop hassling us after decades. If there was an apology we missed it.

Maybe we should count our blessings. In New Jersey it is illegal to pump your own gas and has been since 1949, when the great Retail Gasoline Dispensing Safety Act was passed. Looking to light a citronella candle? It was a lot easier before 1994, when the government deemed that cigarette lighters be made childproof. Manufacturers had to add an annoying metal strip that seriously hampered the ease of creating a flame. The Consumer Product Safety Commission ruled that “all disposable, butane lighters, and most novelty lighters to resist the efforts of 85 percent of the children to operate them.”

Apparently a smart batch of kids did the testing that day.

Lighters with the long, flexible heads, which are used for lighting grills and candles, are equipped with annoying child locks, requiring the user’s hand to execute two disparate motor functions at once. Fire pits are sold everywhere but in many towns they are not quite legal. Open flames are not allowed in many cases unless there is cooking going on. The result invariably is that residents of Massachusetts are pretending to be cooking by keeping a prop hot dog around while town officials pretend that they believe it.

We are being impressed into backyard theater because big, dumb government insists on being the director of our lives. Planning a Sunday barbecue? To beat the rush get to Market Basket early for those brats and steak tips — they open at 7 a.m.

You’ll have to wait another three hours to pick up any beer though because in Massachusetts you can’t purchase alcohol until 10 a.m. Why is that? Why does government get to make that decision? Don’t they work for us?