Going Back to Work When (and if) Lights Go On Again
Two-thirds of this column was written when the computer went off. In so doing, it caused what I had written to disappear, so that is why I’m thinking of going out in the kitchen and hitting the cooking sherry. But I can’t even do that because there are no lights in the kitchen. That is how the entire Walpurgis Night began.
There has been a problem with the kitchen lights for a long time. They flicker, flutter and sometimes do not go on at all. Then Patsy goes out into the closet outside the back door. She balances herself on the electric lawn mower, steadying herself with a shovel, and pushes a lot of those things that look like light switches. My contribution is to run up and down the halls and in and out the rooms calling, “Not yet.”
Finally, Patsy hits the right one, the lights go back on again and civilization is restored. There is a profound thought there just at my fingertips about how unhorsed we are when a small convenience is removed and panic scampers in with a mean giggle, but I am too frustrated at the moment to grasp it.
Every time Patsy climbs off the lawn mower, she says: “One of these days, we ought to label those things.” I agree, and then we go about our day with the switches unidentified.
Last October, the kitchen lights began to flicker and finally went out. We decided that there must be a short and that standing on the lawn mower and running up and down the halls might not be the best way to handle this. So I called an electrical firm, which was recommended by Dick Roe, a brilliant man who knows more than Patsy or I will ever need to about almost everything.
A man, Peter, came over and spent two hours turning the switches off and on and finally climbed into the attic. This doesn’t sound like much, but it is quite a feat because the attic is full of Christmas boxes and you have to balance on the 2-by-4s.
Finally, the lights in the kitchen were back on, but Peter said he hadn’t found anything to account for the flickering. He went away.
Patsy and I went through our routine a few more times, but the other day we decided we needed a permanent solution.
I called the electrician again, and the son of the owner came over. He is a handsome young man with one of those belts with all this stuff dangling from it, which looks as if it were part of a pirate’s costume. He was here on a Friday and the lights went on and he said all was well.
The next day, Saturday, the stove was dead, its little coils dark and cold. I called the stove man. He came over and started the stove again, but he said the problem was not in the stove. He spent quite a good deal of time in the back closet. However, he lifted the lawn mower out first. Why not, he’s about 6-foot-3. He said there was a problem. Well, by gar.
The next morning the kitchen lights were out again. So were all the plugs on the stove side of the kitchen, the front hall, the back hall and the lights over the front walk. I called the electrician, and a woman told me what the hourly cost was on Saturday. Patsy and I decided we could stay at the Pasadena Hilton for that, but we had Peaches and Mrs. Goldfarb. So it was just a thought. Besides, we had the stove and lights in the part of the kitchen where the table and chairs are.
So we got through Sunday with the toaster balanced on the adding machine and my coffee bean grinder in the sunroom. Monday, I called the electrician again because, somehow, we have to get this problem solved lest we are all scorched in our beds.
The young man came back wearing his wonderful belt and a determined look and I sat down at the computer, wearing my plantation hat against the sun coming in the window.
When the column was well on the way to completion (by the way, I don’t want you to be disappointed but it has no end), the young man, who, by now, was in the attic, did something imaginative and the computer went off. My day’s work went into that never-never land where the lost columns go and I went back to a revolutionary piece of equipment called an electric typewriter.
David Steinbacher is here sawing up the tree that fell across the driveway from the neighbor’s hill and using an electric saw which makes the sound of a thousand tormented souls. The gardener is outside using an electric edger which sounds like the saw. And my good friend who puts the house together every two weeks, Lorine Williams, is weaving the vacuum cleaner back and forth.
The young man will solve the problem, I’m sure. He has one of those determined jaws and that fine belt. The noise is enough to drown out “Gotterdammerung” played by any symphonic orchestra with a double brass section. Lorine just put a slice of bread in the toaster, which is still on the adding machine. Peaches is barking because she feels she should make some contribution, and I am going away and leave this mad place. I’m going out and find the closest library where they throw you out for turning pages too loudly.
About this typewriter. I think these things will catch on.
