He’d like to punch his lights out . . . the guy who invented the 60,000-hour bulb

My wife found an item in one of her mail order catalogues that she thought might interest me.

She said, “It’s a light bulb that lasts 60,000 hours, so you never have to replace it.”

I felt a twinge of anxiety.

“Sixty thousand hours?” I said.

“Yes, it says that’s long enough to last 20 years, if you only burn them eight hours a day.”

“The way we leave lights on,” I said evasively, “that would only last us about 10 years.”

Even so, I was worried. ‘Let me see it,” I said.

The ad read: “You never have to change these bulbs. Standing on a ladder, or balancing on a chair, while trying to replace a hard-to-reach light bulb in the dark, is one of our least favorite chores. So we’ve replaced all our ordinary bulbs with these patented Diolight Forever bulbs, guaranteed for 60,000 hours. That’s 20 years, even at eight hours every day!”

I felt like an NFL quarterback whose contract has not been renewed. I was through. Over the hill.

The truth is, changing light bulbs is the only male chore left to me around the house. I have always regarded changing light bulbs as a job that requires exquisite physical balance, a respect for electricity, good hands and a certain amount of engineering intuition.

I don’t say that my wife, or any other woman, doesn’t have these skills; but there is the added element of danger. As the ad implies, balancing on a chair while trying to change a light bulb is a risky business.

The chair may slide out from under you. Or you may lose your balance and fall. With your head turned up toward a ceiling fixture, and your arms raised, you may become dizzy.

Now and then I have found my wife trying to change a bulb by herself. She invariably uses a chair, though I have told her and told her that one must use a ladder, for safety’s sake.

I always say, “What are you doing?”

She says, “I am changing this light bulb. It’s been out for two weeks.”

The implication is that she’s not only quite capable of changing the bulb herself, but that I have been negligent of my duty in not changing it for two weeks.

I always instruct her to get down from the chair, and assure her that I will change the bulb immediately.

There are two reasons for this:

One, I don’t want her to fall and break a leg or a hip. I would be absolutely helpless without her, since the only thing that would get done around the house would be the changing of light bulbs.

I would have nothing to eat, I would have no ironed shirts, and I would have no one to put out the trash barrels.

Two, if she changed bulbs, there would be nothing left for me to do.

In my hardier years I did concrete work. I built for the ages. In the beginning I didn’t know that one could fill a pour with empty beer cans, stones and other debris, to lighten it and to save concrete.

Consequently, the steps I built from the front porch down to the sidewalk are solid concrete. I mixed it all with a shovel in a wheelbarrow, and poured it into forms I had built myself. It will never break, erode or slide.

I also built a beautiful curving downhill walk from the service porch to the front sidewalk. I swept the fresh concrete with a broom to make it slip-proof and give it an attractive texture.

Since then we have lost our milkman, who was the only reason for the walk. Our back door has been permanently locked for years. But that walk is my masterpiece. If we ever sell the house it will add $5,000 to the price.

I also built concrete steps from the upper level of our backyard to the lower level, 12 steps with two landings. Solid as the Lincoln Memorial. Each step is bound to the next with steel brackets. My steps will never break up or slide. After the Big One has done us in, and archeologists are sifting through the debris of Mount Washington a century or two from now, they will find those steps and wonder at the determination, ingenuity and integrity of 20th-Century man.

But I haven’t done concrete since my disk slipped. I have never been much good at plumbing or carpentry, and, except for changing light bulbs, I don’t fool with electricity at all.

So there isn’t a lot I can do to prove that I’m still the man of the house, unless that term has been outmoded by the women’s liberation movement.

I am very good at light bulbs.

I say it takes engineering intuition. When you are unscrewing a ceiling globe, for example, you have to remember that the screws on the far side of the globe must be screwed out clockwise , not counterclockwise as with those on your own side. It takes experience to get that straight.

We keep a large supply of bulbs in the linen closet, and whenever a bulb burns out, I get right on the job. At least in a week or two. You have to get yourself mentally organized to change a light bulb.

So I am not about to send away for any light bulbs that are guaranteed to last 60,000 hours, or 20 years, whichever comes first.

Technology is not going to obsolete me.