Mad World and Hallelujah

"I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad,
The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had."

"I've been here before. I've seen this room and I've walked this floor.
I used to live alone before I knew you."

A Poultry Story

And there are quite a few. This one is from the time we lived in Schmidt's house, as I recall. Tommy and Agnes were visiting. Tommy was kind of a wild man for his time, kind of crazy and unconventional. I think there was a time he didn't have a job,and later he worked nights. Anyway, we were all out in the back yard, and we had chickens running around all over the place, free-range they'd be called nowadays. My mother said one of the hens was acting sick, and she picked it up and showed it to Tommy and Agnes. They'd felt its crop, and evidently determined there was a too-large foreign object that the chicken had swallowed---you should know that chickens will eat almost anything. The chicken was in distress. "I can fix that," Tommy offered. My mother held the chicken while Tommy took out his penknife, cut open the crop area (bloodless surgery as I recall, or maybe just lost in the feathers) and they fished out the offending obstruction. I think it was a stone. Chickens need grit to grind their food, but this chicken had gone too far, sizewise. My mother used a large sewing needle and thread to sew up the incision. They put the chicken down on the ground, the chicken took off, operation a success. The only thing was that my mother must have sewn the incision a little too tight and the chicken walked with a limp for the rest of its life. Picture this---chicken takes a step, its head goes down,next step, head goes up, and so on. We always knew that chicken.

The Buffalo

This is not my earliest memory, but it's one of the earliest. We were living in the yellow "tenant house" on the Bates' farm in Melrose. My brother and I were outside on the porch when he told me to look at that buffalo on the porch of the main house, brick as I recall, across the driveway. "A big black buffalo,"he said, "just standing there." So I looked and saw the big black buffalo, just standing there, exactly as he'd said. I don't think I thought any more about it: I definitely wasn't scared, thought it was interesting. But later, I remember my mother questioning me in a serious tone: what had I seen? It turned out, it seems, that my brother had become sick and was running a fever, one of the few things my mother was terrified of. She had been inside--Dorothy must have been a little baby then, or maybe even not yet born. Joseph had been raving and talking about the buffalo on the porch next door, as well as (I think at that time) being very afraid of the furniture legs that had animal carvings on them. I have one of those vivid memories of being questioned by my mother as to what I'd seen , and I knew it was important, though didn't understand why. You should understand that back in those days, and certainly in our family, adults seldom asked children questions about anything, what answers could kids possibly have? I know I told my mother I'd seen the buffalo, remember describing where it was standing, what it looked like. I don't know whether I reassured her or not. I was so little at the time I'm thinking I just accepted whatever my older brother told me. I have a memory of my mother saying it must have been a large black stray dog that we'd both seen. But you know, in my mind, I can still today see the image of that big black buffalo. It was standing at an angle facing toward the back part of the porch. And I'm not scared.

How to--fix that fridge

Ironically, or is it coincidentally. the first day I went back to doing what I do, I was in a home where I noticed that the family's refrigerator had a cord tied around the freezer of the refrigerator. The door wouldn't stay closed, they told me, so we put a cord around it and fastened it to a hook on the wall. I can relate, I said, but the way my refrigerator is placed, it's open-ended with no wall nearby. "No problem," the man of the house replied. "What you do is you drill a little hole in the edge of the door, insert a hook, and tie a bungee cord around the freezer." He even offered to do it for me, but I think I'll stick with the duct tape for now. The more I think about it though, maybe that will work. But should you drill a hole in your freezer door, I wonder.

Duct tape on fridge

So since life abruptly dealt a much stronger hand than dealing with a refrigerator that has a faulty freezer door, we had to come up with a quick fix; even in despair you can't have your refrigerator dripping water all over the kitchen floor, and destroyed food in your freezer,so we were forced to come up with our own solution. That is duct tape holding the freezer door shut. Otherwise, every time you open and then close the refrigrator door, the freezer door pops open, and the open-door alert has softly beeped itself out so we have no warning. Duct tape holds the door shut, but once you peel it back to open the door, you can't count on its being sticky enough to re-hold the door. So besides having had to eat those 3 Friendly Sundae Cups in a row, I have given up putting frozen blueberries on my morning cereal, and I don't even remember now what else is in the freezer. But help may yet be on the way. Read on...

Fridge Part II

Customer Service: I called to inquire about the warranty on my year-old refrigerator. The rep identified herself as Amber, and then pronounced a statement in a language I couldn't understand. I told her I didn't know what she said aand she answered that "it didn't matter" and asked for my telephone number. I did so and when asked the reason for my call, I said I was calling about the warranty on my Kenmore refrigerator. "The warranties do not apply to refrigerators," she told me. I answered that I was looking at the warranty. Then she said I'd had a service call on the fridge, and decided not to repair it. I'd done that once on another refrigerator, but never on this one. I don't know how that information even came up , if indeed it did, so I said that isn't true. Today is May 26 she said, you purchased it on May 23,2011, it was delivered on May 25, the warranty is effective from date of delivery, not the date of sale. I tried again, "For less than 24 hours, the warranty does not apply? And the refrigerator has been malfunctioning for about a month. May I speak to someone else?" She put me on hold while she went to contact another person. Some Bollywood-type music was playing, and if I had not hung up after a very long time on hold, I have the feeling I'd still be listening to that music.

The Refrigerator

In 1970, we bought a new Coppertone GE refrigerator. It never needed repairs to keep it working, though the glass shelves had cracked and were duct-taped together. Parts of the plastic interior trim were broken and even missing, but the refrigerator kept working. I'm sure it cost dollars more in energy use, but we were never aware of it. But in 2oo5, my son replaced the old GE with a brand new Maytag bottom freezer refrigerator. It had a four-year warranty and a mere month after the warranty expired, the refrigerator stopped cooling. We had a repair call, bought a replacement part and all was well for a few months when the great meltdown recurred. Enough, we decided and bought a new Kenmore, and trashed the 4 1/2 year old Maytag, as a lemon. We bought a brand new Sears Kenmore bottom freezer type on May 23, and it was delivered May 25 of 2010. The freezer door didn't really have a satisfactory feel to it when you went to close the door, but it beeped gently when ajar, so no problem. Or so we thought. One day in late April there was water on the floor, and the inside of the freezer was covered with frost. Shut the door, make sure it's tight. Repeat process a week or so later and then the next. One day the refrigerator's door was ajar long enough to soften the ice cream and I had to eat 3 Friendly's Sundae Cups in a single afternoon because you shouldn't refreze ice crea. By now the beeper door ajar signal is no longer working. Maybe it beeped itself out during the night. It turned out that every time the main door was closed, the freezer door popped open. So it's time to check the Warranty---next post.