Microwave Project

     “What are you frying?” became “Ugh!  Bacon!”

     One disadvantage of living in a nice, tight, energy-efficient house is the frying pan on the range.  What we fried stayed with us for a day or longer.  We noticed it when coming up the steps from the basement.  “Ah yes, those sautéed onions.”  Or when returning from an outing, as we walked through the garage door entering into the kitchen.  “Bean soup with the ham shank doesn’t smell quite as good as it did last night.”

    We lived with that for a year.  Fish had to be done on the grill outside, an okay solution most of the time, except in zero or below weather.  Stuff done in the oven wasn’t quite as volatile as the stovetop.  Baked fish was a tolerable cold weather alternative.

      Things came to a head in November with the onset of chemotherapy.  That’s when “Ugh! Bacon!” hit the air.   While chemotherapy reduced the Goodwife’s overall ability to smell things, bacon hit an olfactory nerve not deadened by the chemicals.  It was the only thing that caused her to have anything close to nausea.

      I tried frying the bacon on the grill.  It’s one thing to step out into the cold to light the grill or turn the fish at the end of the day while fully dressed.  It’s quite another to keep an eye on the bacon strips in early morning garb.  Bacon can turn into charcoal pretty fast and has to be watched.

        I tried using the microwave fan with charcoal filter that supposedly filters the cooking odors as it recirculates the air.  That maneuver only sped up the bacon diffusion and spread it further from the kitchen.  Plus the fan was so loud that with it on, I couldn’t hear radio, television, a conversation, or even the phone in my pocket if it decided to ring.

      The over-the-range microwave had other deficiencies.  It had no turntable, it was that old.  It was white over a stainless steel stove. (Pretty important, I hear.)  I guess its biggest problem was the taboo of a consumer-oriented economy, and the thing to be avoided in modern America:  it was old.

     When we built the kitchen in our Kansas house, we installed a range hood vented to the great outdoors.  It functioned well, venting the cooking odors with a powerful, quiet fan.  LED lights illuminated the stovetop.  It only had one drawback.  A cold southeast wind could find its way through both dampers, the one in the wall cap and the one in the back of the vent hood.  It let in cold air under the right weather conditions.

         I built a “lollipop” to counter that problem.  It was a Styrofoam wedge that fit the wall cap and held the damper closed while it insulated things a little.  It was glued to a short piece of dowel rod that was easily inserted or removed.  The dowel sticking out of the wall cap reminded us that the vent was plugged.  The device was only needed two or three times a year, as only a cold southeast wind caused the problem.

     We discussed replacing the microwave in this house with a vent hood.  There were some problems.  Where would we put the microwave?  What was behind the microwave?  Did the tile go all the way up, or was it only up to the microwave?

     I researched vent hoods.  Most of them have a noise scale, showing how quiet, or noisy, the vent fan is.  Try to find that information for an over-the-range microwave.

    Sometime in January, after the Christmas and New Years’ madness settled down, and when I no longer had to worry about finishing the roof job, I grew brave and pulled the old microwave down from its perch.  Sure enough, the tile went from backsplash to cabinet bottom.  We could put in a range hood if we chose.

   

     In the end, we opted for another microwave.  It had to be quieter than the old one, or we would never use it.  It should be stainless steel.  A trip to the library to consult the Consumer Reports turned up a GE model rated best buy.

     That model was on sale at Best Buy.  It had to be ordered.  It arrived a week later.  Then came the difficult part.  Cutting through the wall to install vent piping.  The vent opening missed wall studs, but the backside of the wall, a wall shared with the garage, had a cabinet clinging to it.

     Using the installation instructions, I marked where the vent had to go through the wall.  With a masonry bit, I drilled through the tile in one of the lower corners of th proposed vent opening.  With a longer bit, I went through sheetrock, insulation, sheetrock again, and I was through the wall and into the garage.  I stepped around the refrigerator, through the door and looked.  Lo and behold, my bit was protruding just above the cabinet!

      There were still problems.  The outlet used by the old microwave had to be moved.  Cutting through the tile was a challenge.  I started with the round bladed tile cutter to score the lines I needed.  I tried a hammer and chisel to deepen the cut.  Pretty slow and not very effective.  The most successful tool was the jigsaw with a hacksaw blade, except the blade wore out pretty quickly.  And, there were two electric wires in the space I needed to go through. 

    In an earlier life, I did cut through two 110-volt electric lines with that very same jigsaw, and lived to tell about it.  I really didn’t want to challenge fate in that way again.

     I got a vibrating cutter for Christmas, but the blade was only for wood.  I made a trip to the hardware store.  I bought a packet of metal-cutting blades for the jigsaw for about $9.  One metal cutting blade for the vibrator was more than twice that.  I really didn’t want to go through a handful of those blades for a 4” X 12” hole through the tile. 

      The expensive vibrator blade came through like a champ.  It went through the tile quickly and was still fairly sharp when I got done.  It didn’t go through the sheetrock so didn’t endanger the wires in the wall. 

     By chunking off the sheetrock the size of the 4” X 4” tile, I could reach into the opening, keep the wires out of the picture, and use the jigsaw to cut safely through the sheetrock.  As usual, the right tool made the job easy.

      The fitting that converted the vent from rectangular to round has an odd shape, necessitating an odd-shaped opening in the garage wall.  My handy hand-held saw cut through the sheetrock on the garage side.

     Four more holes with the masonry bits got the mounting plate secured to the wall.  The Goodwife helped me boost the microwave into its place and get the back of the machine hooked into the mounting plate.  But alas! The bolts they sent to secure the front of the oven through the floor of the cabinet above were a half-inch short.

     The old microwave sat on the counter for a couple of weeks while we waited for the new one to arrive and while I was making the necessary alterations to the wall.  Now, the new microwave had to spend some time on the counter.  It sat there while I took four days to sing Valentines.

      Finally, a trip to the local hardware store netted three longer bolts.  The kitchen range came out for the second time, the microwave carefully elevated and hooked to its mounting plate, and this time the bolts made contact with the threads in the top front of the machine.  It was there.  The only thing left was to run the vent through a nearby outside wall. 

       That didn’t get done right away.  For a few days, the fairly quiet over-the-range microwave- range vent vented into the garage.  The garage smelled like Italian sausage for a while.  Better the garage than the living room.

     On a cold rainy day, the vent found its way through the exterior garage wall.  Mission accomplished.  But then, it’s not about the goal.  It’s about the journey, they say.  Nothing like spreading a day job over three or four weeks.

 

               

Singing Valentines

     

     First comes Christmas.  Then comes others, like Halloween or Mother’s and Father’s Days.  Somewhere in there is Valentines’ Day. 

    Americans like to celebrate holidays by spending.  The holidays play a big part in keeping the economy going.  We spend the most at Christmas.  We spend quite a bit on the other holidays, too.

     Valentines’ Day seems tailor-made for those of us in the barbershop world.  The classic old love songs capture and celebrate the sentiment of the day.  Plus we can do our part to keep the economy moving by selling singing Valentines, helping to make Valentines’ Day the third or fourth most expensive holiday. 

     Singing Valentines keep our local barbershop group alive.  The proceeds help to hire a musical director and pay the rent to a local church that allows us to meet weekly on their premises and  provides housing for our music collection.  Two trailers in the church parking lot contain file cabinets and a set of risers.

     Every January, after we have recovered from the Christmas holiday, we begin thinking about doing singing Valentines. Singing songs to blushing recipients is the fun and easy part.  The first challenge is to find someone who will take charge and organize things. 

     That is pretty big job, taking phone calls and making out a schedule.  We had three quartets delivering this year.  Each quartet has to have its own schedule.  Coordinating things so the singers don’t spend all their time driving hither and yon challenges the organizer.

    Getting the word out to all the procrastinating husbands and fiancés is the second big challenge.  (Once in awhile we deliver to a male paid for by a female, but most of our jobs are boys hiring us to sing to girls.)  Advertising is expensive and not always effective.  We hang out posters in stores and restaurants.

     One of the best deals for us is to get a feature on radio, television, or in the local paper.  It’s free and a lot of people see it.  The problem is that most of that kind of coverage doesn’t appear until February 15, the day after Valentines’ Day. Too late to do us much good.

    Valentines’ Day falling on a weekend is also bad news for the singing Valentines business.  It seems most of our patrons prefer to embarrass their significant-other at work, among fellow employees.  Valentines’ Day on Sunday this year proved to be the lemon for lemonade.

     The quartet I just joined has delivered a Valentine to a local lady for the past three years.  This year she turned 105 years-old.  Great stuff for a feature story.  The lady’s son, the buyer of our service, agreed to have us deliver on Thursday.

     Rex, our quartet driver, made a discreet call to the local paper.  They agreed to have a photographer and reporter on hand on Thursday, 11:45 a.m.  It all came together, and voila!  We made Friday’s paper.

    For the complete story, you can go to

http://lovelandreporterherald.co.newsmemory.com/?token=5dyoFS%2for049lh5Bei9oVG5lW5j%2f9ui2&product=eEdition_rh

     Rex’s efforts paid off.  The three quartets delivered over 60 singing Valentines Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  We went everywhere from Assisted Living places to private homes, restaurants, the local Ford dealer, a horse barn, corporate headquarters, and a second hand store.  We finished Sunday evening about 8 p.m. in a classy restaurant where the proprietor’s wife hired us to sing to the proprietor.  She even gave us a tip—a drink from the bar and an appetizer on the house.  Nice way to conclude!

     Monday night, we celebrated Valentines’ Day a day late by taking our sweethearts out for a banquet at one of the nicer restaurants in town (paid for by us, not by the club or our weekend efforts).

      Now it’s time to launder our wash-n-wear white tuxedos, red shirts, and cummerbunds.  Polish those white shoes and put everything in the back closet.  Valentines’ Day will roll around again

     In the meantime, save your money.  Easter is a pretty expensive holiday, too.  Mother’s Day won’t be far behind.

  

Blind Gymnast

     “I thought, ‘just this once. . .’”  That refrain we would hear many times in the next 45 minutes.

     It was one of the most memorable assembly school programs going back 40 years.  We experienced a variety of programs in our small country school.  For one, the highway patrol would present some kind of program on driving safely at least once a year.  Some were gruesome films of car wrecks. 

      Towards the end of my teaching career, Burlington Northern presented a program encouraging students to consider railroads when choosing a career.  The presenters showed all the jobs Burlington Northern was trying to fill.  They also included a section on safety at railroad crossings. 

      Kansas Highway Patrol sent us Trooper Nathan (I think that was his name) every year for a highway safety program.  From him I learned to follow the vehicle in front of me by two seconds.  It was a much easier way to figure a safe following distance than the old way that required the driver to figure car lengths and coordinate that figure with speed. So many car lengths for every ten miles an hour.

    Many of the programs were musical.  I remember when I was a student a couple who sang show songs.  The only song I can remember them doing is “Anything you can do, I ca do better.”

     Another program I remember was a magician who doubled as a clown.  He made a stream of fifty-cent pieces flow out of Jerry Tanner’s nose.  Poor Jerry about pulled his nose off trying to get a coin out of his nose when he returned to his seat.  The same guy made a stream of water go in one ear and out the other of a volunteer participant.  At least so it appeared.  Those on the fringe of the audience could see the water coming from a tube behind the magician’s right ear.

      The local REA boys, our electric power source, put on an impressive safety program one March, about kite-flying time.  They set up a miniature substation on the gym floor.  They fried hot dogs representing a cat or other animal that touched the hot line while crawling around on the pole.  They set kite lines on fire and made pinwheels and sparks that were quite impressive.  They demonstrated all the safety equipment, insulated tools, special gloves, that they used when working on power lines.

     Lester Andersen, a friend from church, was one of the presenters.  Once he took us on a private tour of the local substation after we had dined with him and Georgia after church one Sunday.  He made us promise not to jump up and try to touch any wires before we entered the yard.  He said he’d never speak to us again if we did.  We didn’t.

      A musical assembly program at school also had a church connection.  The man’s name was Pruth McFarlane.  I never saw him out of his wheelchair.  He sang for the assembled school.  The only song I remember was the brown bear one.  “Ah me, ah me, All he said was ‘Woof!’” was the refrain.

      While performing at the local schools, Mr. McFarlane stayed at the Bank Hotel.  Leo Snyder, owner and manager of the Bank Hotel, brought Mr. McFarlane to church with him.  He sang an anthem for the church service.  We met him up close and personal after church service.

        Another safety assembly brought us a bow-and-arrow expert.  I remember him shooting a blunt arrow with no tip across the gym and through the bottom of a cast iron skillet.  He might have been the one who fired a wax slug bullet through a skillet, too, or I may have two shows confused.  Both displays were impressive.  I have often thought since then that guy must spend a fortune on cast iron skillets.   

     There were quite a few science programs brought to us through the assembly program, especially after the 1957 Sputnik launch by the Russians.  A man brought a bottle of liquid oxygen (or was it nitrogen?).  He instantly froze a wiener by dipping it in a container of the stuff.  He poured some down the barrel of a toy muzzle-loader and shot a cork quite a ways.  He about ran the rods out of a toy steam engine by fueling it with the stuff.

      A blind man brought his leader dog and showed us how well he got along with the dog’s help.  During his demonstration, he slipped on a stairway going down to the gym floor.  We all gasped.  He recovered and told us he slipped intentionally to show us how the dog would react, but I often wondered if that was the truth.

      Our blind gymnast came much later and to Kansas where I was a teaching.  He brought quite a bit of equipment because we had no gymnastics program.  He had uneven and parallel bars and a horse.  His program was a safety program, too.  When he wasn’t on an apparatus, he was talking.

    He told us how as a young kid, six or seven, people told him not to use a knife to carve towards himself.  He would put his eye out.  But he thought he could get by just this once.  He demonstrated with imaginary stick and knife pulling the blade towards him, the blade slipping and hitting him in the eye.  He followed up by saying, “I thought just this once. . . .  Isn’t it funny how so many people in prison thought the same thing?”

      He told how he went along for three or four years with one eye.  One day he was throwing a stick up in the air and catching it.  Yes, folks had told him not to do that.  He could put his eye out, but he thought, “Just this once. . . . “  as he demonstrated tossing the stick in the air and missing it as it hit him in his good eye.  “Isn’t it funny how many people in prisons thought the same thing?” he repeated.

      Between anecdotes, he demonstrated his skill as a gymnast.  He pointed out that though handicapped, he still could still use his ability for something good.  He hoped we would not follow in his footsteps, but would listen to and develop good safety habits.

      Unfortunately, his career as an entertaining gymnast was coming to an end.  His left shoulder was troubling him, as evidenced when he had to make two or three efforts to maintain a handstand on the parallel bars.  He would be unable to perform much longer.

    I’m not sure what became of the guy.  Like most of the programs, the presenters entered our lives for a day and then they were gone, never to be heard of again. 

      There was one exception to that.  A big guy put on a program for us (I can’t remember what he did).  He was probably an ex-football player, he was that big and muscular.  He took a volunteer from the audience, put her one his shoulders and did some kind of Russian (maybe) dance where he was squatting and kicking his legs out one at a time with the girl on his shoulders.  When the program was over, the school superintendent announced that he thought the guy should be on television.  We all cheered and encouraged the man to try to get on tv.

      Some months later, when we had almost forgotten the whole thing, the school got a letter from the performer telling us he would be appearing on The Danny Thomas Show. The letter thanked us for our encouragement and gave the date of the show in which he was appearing.  We tuned in and sure enough, there he was with Danny’s television Daughter (Angela Cartwright, maybe?) on his shoulders doing his Russian dance.  We were thrilled to see someone we knew on TV, and to think we might have had some small part in his success by encouraging him.       

       

’59 Chevrolet

      We didn’t know what we had.  My folks had a ’53 Chevy.  His folks got a ’59 Chevrolet.  When we were sophomores, we had no older brothers to drive us home after basketball or baseball practice.  Our parents took turns picking us up and taking us home.  Sometimes we rode in a ’53 Chevy, sometimes in a ’59 Chevy.

     When we got to be juniors and had drivers’ licenses, I drove the old ’52 Chevrolet.  Jake got to drive his folks’ ’59 Chevrolet.

     Then we found out what we had.  One day I was to meet Jake at his home.  He wasn’t there when I got there.  His dad Ed and I were talking just outside their house.  Ed said, “There he comes.  Looks like he’s givin’ it the devil.”

     Two things led Ed to that conclusion:  the cloud of dust and how the car appeared and disappeared as it topped the hills on the road east of the house, and the sound the car was making.  “How fast do you drive it?” I asked Ed to divert him and possibly ameliorate a chewing out for Jake.

     “Just as fast as the [adjective deleted] [hyphenated noun deleted] will go.”  I laughed.  Maybe Jake wasn’t in for a chewing out after all, and Ed definitely had a lead foot. 

     Jake was definitely giving it the devil, too.  Like father, like son, maybe.  Jake confided to me once that Ed had warned him that he must drive sensibly when others were in the car, their lives in his hands.  He considered me a special friend and that rule didn’t apply when we were the only two in the car.   If we shared a disastrous fate, it was okay. It was like we were one.  Touching.  Maybe a little disconcerting.   

     So it was that one moonlit Saturday night, we were driving north on 109, cruising 60 or so when Jake decided it was bright enough he didn’t need headlights.  So he shut them off.  For some reason, he decided to switch them back on.  At the far reaches of the headlight beams a big black cow materialized standing crosswise in the middle of the road, only the eyes reflecting the light as she turned to look at us.

     On came the brakes.  Jake managed to get the thing slowed enough to give the cow time to move and to take a shoulder of the road to get around her.  I think we both breathed a little faster for a while.  We were young.  It was exciting.  It took some time, maybe years for the significance to sink in completely.  Do you believe in guardian angels?

     Jake relied heavily on the brakes.  I wasn’t in the ’59 Chevy when the brakes let him down.  His mother was.  They lived just south of what is now Road P.  To get to town, they went east on Road P for about two miles where it went down a hill and dead ended into the paved road, 109. 

      They topped the hill and headed down towards the junction.  When Jake hit the brakes, the pedal went to the floor and the car slowed not a whit.  He reacted by punching the emergency brake with his left foot and “hung with it” as he said.  The emergency brake locked up the back wheels. 

     When we passed the site later, you could still see the tracks the back tires made as they slid across the pavement.  Jake had enough driving experience to realize if he tried to turn left or right, he would roll the car.  So they ended up head on into the bank of the ditch.  The car stopped before going through the fence.  It sustained some front end damage, but was soon repaired and returned to service.  A brake line had developed a serious leak.  It too was replaced.

     One of the attractions of the ’59 was the awesome sound it made when Jake stepped on the gas pedal.  The carburetor throat howled as it attempted to ingest enough air to answer the demand of the floored accelerator pedal.  It sounded a lot like the big boys on the drag strip.  A look under the hood showed why.

     The car had a 348 engine.  The Chevrolet V-8 evolved from the puny 265 first introduced in 1955 to the 348.  I’m not sure if the later 327 or the 396 could top that 348 engine.  It had a unique look.  The valve covers (and heads, I guess) were shaped like a number 3 instad of the typical Chevrolet rectangular head and valve cover.  It would run, anyway.

      I think the climax of our ’59 Chevrolet experience came on what is now Road 3N.  When I was a kid 3N was a section line, a cattle trail.  It was bordered by our pasture fence on the north and the “school section” fence on the south.  Only a half mile on the west end, from Road 26 east, was elevated and graveled.  It stopped at the driveway for the “Green place” which became the “Oller place” after the Greens moved to Kiowa.

     When the school district wanted to shorten the bus route, they offered to pay us a small stipend to provide transportation to the junction of 3N and Road 28, Road 28 known then as the mail route.  It would save the bus about seven miles a day.

      Part of the deal was the county elevating and gravelling 3N for the mile and a half between 26 and 28.  The county agreed because it would connect north-south paved roads 109 and State Highway 71.

     A second part of the deal was a sign Dad made that said “SCHOOL BUS” which he attached to the top of the old ’53 Chev.  It was for insurance purposes, I suppose.  The sign was made of wood, painted white with black block letters.  It had suction cup feet and straps with hooks that caught in the rim around the car roof, like a luggage carrier.

     The sign lasted a few weeks.  It had to come off when we used the car for other purposes.  I think it came off and stayed off when we met a big truck on a windy day.  With the whoosh of the truck’s air wash added to the wind and our momentum, the sign blew off.  It never went back on.

      On the newly elevated road, there was an incline just west of the Frank Horak place.  Going west, the hill went up at a modest angle, but then it dropped quickly to the Lickdab creek where it crossed 3N.  In the beginning, there was no bridge or culvert.  The creek bottom was elevated only as much as the rest of the road.  When that crossing washed out a few times, the county installed a six-foot culvert.  To smooth things out and provide fill material to cover the culvert, they cut down the hill.

     There is still a hill there, but the top is not nearly as high as it once was, and the culvert raised the road several feet above the Lickdab.  That operation spoiled our fun.

     The fun came by going west over the hill.  When you dropped off the hill crest, it “tickled your stomach” we used to say.  I guess the “stomach tickle” was a brief instant of weightlessness.

     Jake used to like to come that way when he took me home.  We would crest the hill doing sixty or so and feel the thrill of the drop.  The ’59 would bottom out with a thump when it hit the Lickdab.

     Jake had a dog named Skeeter.  He was black brown, stood about a foot high, and he loved to ride in the front seat of the car.  He got to go on short trips with Jake sometimes. 

    One day Jake, Skeeter and I were headed west on 3N.  Jake hit the hill at about sixty.  Skeeter had to scramble a little to keep his balance when we came over the hill.  That gave Jake the idea he should try it a little faster, so we turned around, went east a ways and tried it again.  I think we made the repeat trip three or four times.  On the last try, we hit the hill doing eighty.

     Skeeter came off the seat, all four feet.  It seemed like he went a foot in the air, but it was probably only a matter of inches.  He was airborne for a second anyway.  He landed in the seat, regained his balance and resumed his sentry position, watching through the windshield to see what was next.    

     We probably topped that hill a few more times after that, before the county smoothed things out, but Skeeter wasn’t along, and we never topped the thrill of that trip.

      As I look back on it, I wonder that we lived long enough to graduate from high school, let alone long enough to qualify for Medicare.  Guardian Angels, I guess.