Published: April 02, 2008 01:50 pm            

WRITE ON: Old Hands

My wife bought the house we live in. I added a lot onto it, but she bought it back in the early 1980’s. When we could get away from our jobs in Los Angeles, we would come to stay here in McCreary County for visits with her family and just to “chill out.” That was back before people used the expression “chill out.” In those days we just “took it easy for a while.” Now we “chill.”

Our house was originally was built by the Stearns Company for a friend of one of the Stearns’s. He was a doctor. The house was small.

Then we, or I should say “I,” started adding on to it. One thing Phyllis had put in was something called a steam shower. It’s like a regular shower with a sliding glass door except it has a little steam generator built in, so you can sit in there and get steamed, so to speak.

When I first saw the steam shower I thought it was something I would never use and a complete waste of money. Now I use it almost every day when I have done physical work in our garden or mowed the lawn or painted sealant on our western cedar siding. It really turns out to be a great thing to have and I’m glad she got it.

One day I turned the steam unit on and nothing happened. Instead of hearing water being drawn into a little tank and then boiled into steam and shot into the shower, I heard nothing. The silence was deafening, to quote an old oxymoron.

Knowing that we have a fair number of power surges and “spikes” of electrical energy in these parts, I did what an old electrician friend of mine told me to do: unplug the unit and let it sit for a couple of days. A lot of electrical appliances have in their circuitry things called capacitors. These are like little “dams” across the flow of current. They make sure that an even supply of “juice” is applied to the circuitry “downstream.” Too much or too little amperage can cause whatever the appliance is to not function properly.

My dead steam shower was a great disappointment. It had worked faithfully for eighteen years and then it suddenly stopped. I am always sad when that happens to anything, from appliances to my car to my own body. Why is it that one day everything works fine and the next day it doesn’t? It seems like a kind of betrayal. What changed in twenty-four hours to take something from being useful and working properly to being sick or even dead?

Anyway, always let an appliance like a television or microwave sit unplugged for a couple of days before taking it to get repaired. You’ll save a lot of money if you do that. It lets the capacitors “drain” off whatever excess charge they hold and Presto! Your unit works again. Not this time, however. My steam shower was dead and I was in mourning.

So I called almost everyone in McCreary County who does electrical work. You can get a list of them from SKRECC, one of our two local electric companies (the other being KU, or Kentucky Utilities). But nobody I called wanted to take a shot at repairing my steam shower mechanism. They may have thought that they couldn’t charge me for the house visit if they couldn’t repair the unit. I told those I spoke with that I’d pay them for coming out to the house and taking a crack at it whether they succeeded or not. I even said I had the number for the Tech Support people for the unit, and the tech folks said they would talk the repair person through making the repair. No dice. Nobody wanted to take it on or they were too busy with other stuff.

Doug Sexton, a fine fellow who was too busy at the time, suggested I call Murphy Appliances and speak to James. I did. James said he would take a crack at fixing my broken steam maker. When he showed up, I saw that James was about my age. We talked about why so many folks didn’t want to tackle my problem. James said that when he started repairing the appliances Murphy sells, he had to learn a lot of different electrical systems and also keep up with how products changed year after year. In doing so, he got to know a lot. As time has gone by, James has become an extremely capable electrician.

We discussed several things as he worked. One thing we talked about is how much information and skill is going to disappear from being locally available as us “old hands” die off. Since we live in a culture which is now “disposable,” meaning when something breaks you throw it away and get another one, the knowledge of how to fix a lot of things is slowly going away.

The same thing happened when I had an old clock that needed fixing. It was built in the 19th Century and was a pendulum “tick-tock” kind of wall clock. The nearest person I could find who could and would actually repair this antique is a fellow named Bill Anderson who lives out in Columbia, Kentucky. Bill’s the only guy for miles around who I found who can repair old clocks. I drove the clock out to Bill and he fixed it.

The point is that as time passes, it is becoming harder and harder to find people with the skills and patience to repair complicated devices. What will happen when the “Old Hands” who can and will do that work aren’t around anymore? Who will fix things if nobody has learned how? I think we are digging ourselves into a hole that is going to be hard to climb out of. If you think I’m wrong, then see what happens the next time you need to get new soles put on your shoes or have a handbag repaired. I am reminded of the old line from the movie and song “Ghostbusters”: Who you gonna call? Thanks James and Bill. You did a wonderful job. Please don’t retire anytime soon.

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Copyright 2008 Peter Ferrara

        

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