Havin' a Heat Wave

The first sign we had that anything was wrong was when we pulled into the driveway after dinner yesterday evening.

It’s been hot here, and Martin’s kitchen door was standing open.  It opens out onto an exterior staircase on the west side of our house, so you can’t miss it as you turn into the driveway.  Usually the only time it is open is when he’s been cooking something smelly.

It was odd because nobody is cooking right now – it’s just too hot – and most people are hunkered down inside trying to keep cool.  Windows and doors are closed as air conditioners hum discordantly through the neighborhoods.

We’d been having issues with that very thing – keeping cool – and had in fact made a side trip to Super-Mega Hardware for a window air conditioner to help take a bit of the stress off the big central model that keeps our own upstairs cool.  We just happened to have a nifty little unit, along with the installation accessories, in the back of the car when we got home.

As I was schlepping it into the house, Martin came down from the apartment literally in meltdown – sweat was pouring off of him, his clothes soaked through and him all agitated and spouting off in his own dialect of Spanglish.

It woulda been the perfect excuse to slap him, had there been an inclination.  In reality, though, it was just too darned hot to touch anyone else for any reason.

When we sorted the translation out, it seemed that his door is open because his air conditioner has stopped working.

Two days ago.

TWO DAYS AGO!!  

And not a word to us about fixing it.  We didn’t notice anything different because it apparently didn’t occur to him to open the windows, much less to pop down the stairs and say, “Hey, it’s a little warm upstairs.  Think you could take a look at it?”

No mention at all during either of the two business days, when repairmen are available and can get parts and, with sufficient financial incentive, be convinced to come to your home to fix things.

Instead, he’d suffered in silence as the thermometer topped 96 each day and the heat index was well into triple-digits, choosing to bring the matter to our attention at 8:00 on a Friday night.

It’s not as though he’d done nothing -- he had dragged every fan in the basement – including the “power dryer”-- upstairs to the apartment and was running them, effectively turned it into a large convection oven for him and the dog.

Yoko needed no urging to come down to the kitchen and visit, probably hoping for a popsicle.  After all, he was wearing a fur coat through the entire ordeal.

Now, it’s not unusual that we don’t have close interaction with Martin for a day or two.  Like neighbors, we smile and wave sometimes, each involved with our own projects and without time to stop and visit.  We’d heard enough sounds and seen enough to know that everyone was alive and mobile.  That’d all been sort of ordinary.

Well, as ordinary as things get around here.

But c’mon, it should have been obvious to anyone that when it’s that hot in your apartment that more than a mere social niceties are warranted.

He is somewhat confounded by the programmable thermostat, and just assumed that technology had gotten the better of him.  That doesn’t explain why he didn’t ask me to come and reprogram it, though.

My HVAC (Heat, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) classes in law school were about as limited as some of the other topics we’ve discussed – first aid, rabid bunnies, basic accounting – so other than “jiggling the handle” and checking what I think are probably the correct breakers for the unit, my solutions were about as effective as opening the hood of the car alongside the road.

It signals others that help may be warranted, but I don’t know a damned thing about what I’m looking at there, either.

Instead, I pulled out my favorite tool – my cell phone -- and found the number for the guy who usually comes and fixes our air conditioners.

Being a smart man, he doesn’t answer any of his telephones at 8:00 on a Friday evening.  That’s just a way to get dragged out of your own air conditioned comfort and into someone’s hot attic to “. . . .take a look at it.”

There’s no parts available.  It’s dark and hot.  There’s nothing that he can do, other than have his evening spoiled.  I don’t blame him, I don’t answer my phone at certain times, either.

So 8:00 on Friday saw us assembling and installing a window unit in the bedroom of the apartment.

It’s much easier than I remember it being when dad used to stuff them into the windows of our house growing up, although my fabrication of “filler parts” around the windows wasn’t as neat a job as his.

After all, it’s just a temporary fix, I hope.

It was plugged in and putting out cool air even before the installation was complete, and Martin's bedroom was down to something livable by the time we were cleaning up the boxes.

Of course, OUR bedroom window was still vacant and wanting, so I had to go BACK to the Super-Mega Hardware Store before they closed.

As luck would have it, the Super-Mega Hardware store 200 yards from the house was all out of the one I wanted.  We’d bought the last one during our earlier trip so I dashed across town to the sister store to get one from them.

Experience is a great teacher.  The second unit went in even more quickly than the first, and is trimmed out better.  By 11:00 our own bedroom was enjoying it’s version of a cooling breeze.

This was good, because after 30 minutes of the window open into the 90+ degree heat, even at 10:00 at night, I was sweating like a wh….

A horse.  Yeah, that’s it.  Sweating like a horse.  Not one in church or anything, just a horse.

And today, when the parts suppliers are safely closed and the repairman’s plans for the weekend cannot be disrupted, he’s safely returned my call (from his boat on the lake, I suspect) and scheduled us for a meeting at 8:30 on Monday morning. 

I’ve worked with him in the past, and know that he generally works in “earth time” rather than “contractor time”, so I look for him sometime between 8:30 and 9 that morning.

And I’ll go back to Super-Mega Hardware and get a simple thermostat – one that says “hotter” and “colder” to replace the programmable model that’s there now and stand sweating in the hallway of the apartment installing it while listening to the little engine that could humming through the closed bedroom door as it keeps that Martin and Yoko comfortable, at least for a little while.