Dear Brother,
Just wanted to write and thank you again for the Gift Card to Super Mega Hardware that you sent for Christmas. I went to there early Saturday morning to spend it. We have a new superstore which is conveniently less than ½ a mile from the house now – much like putting the liquor store next to the AA meetings, it is something of a mixed blessing for me. I thought you might find it interesting that I didn’t spend it on anything frivolous or silly, although there’s not much in there that qualifies as either of those in my opinion. As Dad taught us, every project is the opportunity to acquire more tools.
Instead I bought light bulbs. Not those fancy curly ones that are all the rage now – we’ve got lots of those and are changing them out as the old ones expire – but instead on some teeennnnyyy little ones that are probably the most important bulbs in the house.
It’s those little halogen ones that go in the kitchen stove hood. They are the “NNNnnnnggggghhh – where’s the coffee” bulbs that produce only enough light to allow you to squint through the steps of creating that nectar of the Gods without searing lightning into your brain before you have sufficient caffeine in your system to provide protection and working brain cells. The ones that put out enough light to make sure you’ve grabbed the regular COFFEE and not that wimpy decaf stuff. They are probably some of the most essential light bulbs in the house, and they’d both been burned out for a couple of weeks and added to a general irritability with having to deal with mornings which tend to come sometime between 4 and 5. Incidentally, those tiny little bulbs are $5.95 each.
Since I was on a light bulb kick in the kitchen, I decided to tackle the oven bulb as well. If you think back to when we were growing up, appliances took a clear 40 watt bulb that screwed in to a normal fixture. I always assumed something was special about it because it cost about 6 times what a regular bulb did and came specially packaged so that you could fling the bulb across the room while trying to pry it out. In my cynicism of midlife, however, I begin to suspect that the hype and packaging was just a marketing ploy as I note that the same bulb works in the stove, refrigerator and microwave. If it’s that versatile, it can’t be that special.
Our stove, however, doesn’t take one of these $1.99 appliance bulbs. I didn’t know what it took, as the cover over the bulb (another innovation) was so securely fastened on by the factory that I couldn’t loosen it with my bare hands, and there are labels plastered all over inside there that warn “DISCONNECT ALL POWER BEFORE CHANGING LIGHT BULB”. I am not sure how they keep from burning up inside the oven, but that’s another mystery to ponder at a different time. I suspect the warning labels are there mandating that you cut the power because the darned cover is fastened on so tightly that you’re likely to shatter it before you get it loose, and the inevitable blood could cause an electrical shock.
The problem, of course, is that the “power connection” is on the wall next to the floor behind this 400 pound stove that is fastened into a granite countertop, the adjacent cabinets AND the wall, just to insure that it doesn’t accidentally move. It took 4 stout young men and a variety of levers, along with some powerful incantations that would have made Mom blush, to get the thing up the stairs, through the door and wedged into the appropriate spot. Since about Thanksgiving of last year when the bulb burned out it’s just seemed easier to shine a flashlight through the oven window if there was something that I really needed to see.
t was fairly early in the morning, though, and still too cool and damp to go work in the yard, so I decided it was time to tackle this minor annoyance as well. Armed with an assortment of screwdrivers I took out the oven racks, contorted myself into a position that defies the laws of physics and guarantees that I will at some point need a kidney transplant (please, take care of yourself, dear brother, since you are the most likely donor) and started to take out the light fixture inside the oven.
Except that it wouldn’t come out. After I extracted myself from the required yoga position, got my “workin’ cap” with the little headlights out and my reading glasses, I tried again only to find that it wasn’t, in fact, a hex head screw but was instead a bolt. Some nitwit bean counter with the manufacturer had apparently saved three-thousandths of a cent each by buying fasteners that didn’t have screwdriver slots cut.
By now, the workout of getting in and out of the stove was such that I’d done away with the need to go to the gym. Again I climbed out of the stove (which is actually pretty roomy, except that I jump every time I hit the heating element, convinced that it has somehow turned itself on in punishment for my declination to disconnect the power to change a simple light bulb) and went to the basement for more tools. I got found my sockets, put them back in order since I dropped the toolbox coming up the basement steps and spilled them all, and for the third time climbed back into the stove and removed the light fixture. The elapsed time to change one light bulb was now exceeding 45 minutes with no end in sight.
After that, the job went pretty smoothly other than trying to stuff the insulation that came out with the socket back into the body of the stove. The little screws, which wouldn’t break loose with the small socket handle, had obviously been installed by the brother of the guy at the filling station who thinks it’s OK to put your tires back on with a pneumatic wrench set with enough torque to spin the car around like a carnival ride, a sadist who has no empathy or compassion for his customers who’ll be stranded alongside the road in the dark and rain, cursing him as they try to change a flat with that little pressed-metal wrench for removing lug nuts that comes with cars today.
The oven bulb, incidentally, is also halogen, with 2 little prongs rather than a screw in base. When I got to Super-Mega-Hardware, I discovered that they sell no less than 50 of them, all with microscopic writing on the base of the bulb in special iridized disappearing ink that you can see when turned at an angle so that your eyes can’t focus on what it says, but which disappears instantly when you put on your reading glasses and try to hold it under the “good light”.
Of course, since the bulb I was replacing was installed by the manufacturer in some third-world sweatshop, it doesn’t look exactly like any of the choices at Super-Mega-Hardware, but it looks “pretty close” to about a dozen and “nearly like” three. In my attempt to reduce consumption and shrink my carbon footprint, I resisted my gut instinct, which was to buy one of each, knowing full well that those that didn’t fit would be relegated to the junk drawer in the kitchen and would never be returned, but would remain there until the other occupants of the house decided that they’d had enough and throw them out, after which I’d melt down because “. . . those cost money” and “. . . we might need them someday.” Do not try and understand the rationality of that argument, there is none, but nonetheless that’s where it would go, genetics being involved and all. You are my people, and I know you understand these things. The fact that these tiny bulbs ranged in price from $5.95 to $11.95 probably had something to do with my decision as well.
My karma was good, however, probably improved from the chanting and yoga that I’d done earlier in the project, and upon my return the bulb slid into place, the cover was returned with reasonable force to insure that it functions as intended but can be removed in the future when necessary, and I went on to my project of the day – a “bottle tree”, a fine southern tradition that reuses the wine bottles we’ve been saving at a rate of about 3 or more a week for quite some time. So long, in fact, that I may have to construct a “bottle forest” rather than a single tree. I am looking forward to the increased storage space once they’re relocated, though.
I went to the basement, which has recently been cleaned to the point that there is reasonable workspace available, strung appropriate extension cords since there are NOT outlets conveniently placed there yet, spread out all the tools and materials only to find that my brand new $10 electric drill from El Cheapo Discount Store had quit. It’s right there on the shelf, next to the other 3 name brand (and more expensive) drills that have also quit, and for which I still have hopes of finding a repairman. This means yet another trip to Super Mega Hardware today . . . . .
Love to you all,
LJ
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