Frugal lifestyle can produce complications
When trouble arrives it always seems to come in bunches. Right in the middle of the big snowstorm our refrigerator conked out.
It survived 30 years, three states and abuse at the hands of three teen-agers.
There is never a good time for a refrigerator to quit working.
Then, later the same day, we heard a grinding noise coming from the furnace.
Below-freezing weather outside is not a good time to hear strange noises in your furnace. Upon inspection, we found the humidifier in the furnace was broken.
With all of the snow piling up in the driveway from the storm of that weekend, the one comforting thought, after the broken refrigerator and the furnace malfunction, was that at least we had a van with four-wheel drive. We would be able to make it to the store for a loaf of bread.
Did I mention that trouble comes in bunches?
On the first attempt at driving the van from the driveway through a rather sizeable snowdrift, it stopped dead in its tracks. Wouldn’t move. Broke down. Busted.
For 351 days of the year, that van had four-wheel drive. It was as steady as a rock on dry pavement. During the minor snowfall of a few inches earlier in the winter, the van plowed through the snow like a bulldozer. At the first sign of a snowdrift, it gave up.
Now we were stuck. As the snow continued to fall our driveway, even the entire street in front of our house, became literally impassable.
It probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The automatic garage door opener couldn’t make up its mind where it wanted to stop the door as it opened or attempted to shut. Sometimes it would make it half way up or down, then just stop. After a few attempts, the chain-drive motor on the opener just quit. We later discovered a gear that pulls the chain was stripped.
Just to add a few thrilling moments to the overall ordeal, the electricity went off a couple of times, apparently caused by the blizzard-like conditions outside.
The Hopwood area where we live is notorious for its frequent episodes of high winds. Previous wind storms have ripped the shingles from the roofs of homes in the neighborhood.
Life, it seems, is just one long maintenance project. Fix this. Repair that. As soon as you get a new refrigerator out of the crate and plugged in, you can bet smoke will start rising from the dishwasher as the electric motor burns out.
When you begin adding up all of the malfunctioning household equipment, broken down vehicles, defective furnace, burned out garage door motors, the list of semi-emergency repair projects can be rather impressive.
My usual response to these household emergencies is well known within the family.
It’s part of the reason, I suppose, that things seem to keep breaking down all the time. Old cars, old refrigerators, old garage door openers.
If you keep these things around long enough, they eventually will break down, but I figure for each day that passes with the equipment still working it’s a gain, of sorts.
My theory is if it works most of the time (okay, half of the time), leave it alone.
The word “new” is not at the top of the list in my vocabulary. Some in the family would say the word “cheap” is at the top of that list. I prefer to consider my reluctance to replace old equipment as just being efficient.
Even with my slow-witted brain I can see a pattern developing. Old equipment, breakdowns, stranded.
Maybe such insightful wisdom only arrives when a person reaches the senior citizen stage. At least that’s the excuse I’ve been using for years for declining to write out checks. What’s the rush to replace reliable, faithful pieces of household machinery?
There’s probably a deep, psychological reason for my obsessive reluctance to buy new gadgets for the house. Maybe it’s the challenge or the drama of never knowing when the next emergency will strike. It could never be that I’m just cheap.
Mike Ellis is the editor of the Herald-Standard. His e-mail address is: mellis@heraldstandard.com.