| 02 August 2006 Technician #0523266 It would be easy enough to slip into the breathless accounts of the latest war, or wars, depending on what you see and read. The Lebanon mess has trumped the news from Iraq, with thousands of ISF troops scouring the countryside for Hezballah rockets before the enforcement of a cease-fire. They say that at least six maneuver brigades are thrashing about, supported by artillery and aircraft. The radicals, for their part, have broken out their precious long-rang munitions and are shooting them at random deep into Israel. That is not to say that the bodies are not still pouring into the morgue in Baghdad, or that the poppy-wars are not continuing near the roof of the world in Afghanistan. It is just too much information. People from Big Pink are in the fight, or on the peripheries of it. The young woman who works at Langley has decamped for the war zone, anxious that perhaps she had blown her cover to the former big-time reporter who just moved into the building. She had told all of us already, so although the cat was out of the bag, and the horses long gone from the barn, I agreed that we would go back to the pleasant story that she worked for the State Department. We have all done that, at one time or another. The real Foreign Service Officer, State Department Susan has likewise taken wing for the Balkans to start her latest overseas tour. She left her new husband behind. He has to extricate himself from the Army, and it will take a few months to complete all the paperwork and transform himself from infantry grunt to Foreign Service dependent spouse. In the meantime, the Old Guard from Fort Myers is occupying the apartment, and enjoying the pool and the grill and cold beer on the patio. A respite from married life, it appears. I wonder how they will do. Back when I was in uniform, there were marriages that had enough tension that only the deployments kept them together. I hope they do well. Summer is a magical time at Big Pink, maybe a little more precious if you are young, and getting ready to deploy. The noise from the pool was muted yesterday. The temperature has spiked up to triple-digits, and I had the place buttoned-up to keep out the moist hot air. The heat index was reported to be around 105 degrees, with worse to come through the working week. I was set up to work from home. I had the company lap-top connected on the dining room table, and was monitoring the flow of boring official e-mail when I wandered by periodically. I was in consumer limbo, scheduled for an in-home service call on my refrigerator. One PM to five PM, they said, just stand by and do not walk far from your phone. The ice-maker was broken, and you can imagine the tension it was causing me. I first noticed when the giant plastic corkscrew that channels the ice in the enormous reservoir down to the crushing unit in the door was turning without resistance. I kicked myself. The ice-maker is so big that there is no place left on the shelves to freeze water in the old-fashioned ice trays. The good news is that the ice-maker is normally so efficient that it produces an a full bin, and at peak capacity will force the little wire lever up into the “off” position. More than once I have failed to monitor the status of the system, and depleted the inventory inadvertently. Most times of the year, that would just mean a rueful warm drink. With the heat index the way it is, this could be actually be really inconvenient, maybe life threatening. That is whre I was when the motor whirred without resistance as I pressed the glass against the paddle of the dispenser on the door. I checked. Ominously, the wire lever was at the “on” position, but the cavernous reservoir was completely empty, a vast white plastic basin stretching away to infinity. I plunged below the sink with alacrity to check that the water was connected, and it was. Then I got the hair-drier from the front bathroom, and hooked it up to the kitchen outlet. I leaned into the freezer, chill mist flowing out as I blasted the unit with hot air. I gave it fifteen minutes to ensure that all the parts were thawed. I anxiously checked the status every few minutes thereafter. Nothing. This was a case of a burned out motor, or worse, a broken water pump. I shivered at the thought, and not from the cold. This was going to mean….an in-home service call. I railed at the injustice as I waited on hold the next day. The Sears people were very nice on the phone, and promptly scheduled me for a visit somewhere within a five-hour window a few weeks hence. I rearranged my business calendar, canceling a few meetings, and resigned myself to the four-floor trudge up the stairs each day. Thank God the ice-maker in the lower unit still worked. I blanched at the thought of having to stop at the Quickie Mart each day on the way home from work to get a sack of Icee-Pure bagged ice. It was so hot outside that it would all melt together by the time I got home, and would congeal into an impenetrable block in the freezer. No crushed ice. This could even mean having to invest in an ice-p[ick, the most dangerous implement in the kitchen junk drawer. I resigned myself to the inevitable. I was home in plenty of time, in case the repairman was lurking to call at the precise stroke of one PM. They do that sometimes, and bill you for the visit if you don't answer, even if they don't leave the truck. I waited patiently, wondering how an icy-cold Coke would taste on crushed ice, or an iced tea. maybe a Long Island Iced tea. I waited, zen-like. The sun passed over the flank of the building, and the sun began to flood the apartment, bringing the heat up. Deep in the afternoon, the phone went off. It was him: Technician #0523266. He told me he was on the way up. I was ready for his arrival. The under-sink space was cleared of the cleaning supplies to provide easy access to the water lines. The frozen foods were bagged, and melting silently in the sink so that he had plenty of room in case it was major surgery. There was a knock on the door, and a bead of sweat rolled down my nose. Technician #0523266 was an amiable fellow. He held a screwdriver and a canvas bag with two cardboard boxes. We exchanged pleasantries, and he seemed to be cool enough, perhaps because he has been in freezers all afternoon. I hovered near him in the kitchen. “Does it cost more if I watch” I asked nervously. “Nah. Do what you want,” he said. “You might learn something.” He opened the freezer door on the side-by-side. He slid out the giant resevoir and placed it on te counter. He pried off the plastic cover on the front of the unit and peered at it for perhaps two seconds. “Don't you have to disconnect the refrigerator?” I asked. “Couldn't you get electrocuted?” He didn't even turn his head. “Burned out motor,” he said. I nodded, as though my concurrence was part of the process. He raised his electric screwdriver, backed out three screws, and the little unit fell off into his hand. He turned, opened one of the boxes, and lifted out an identical replacement motor and placed it on the front of the ice-maker. He mounted it by replacing the three screws. Then he put his screwdriver back in his bag. “That's it?” I asked with incredulity. “Yes and no," he said matter-of-factly. "The drive shaft on the motor is made of plastic, and they don't last long in the frozen environment. The part costs maybe a couple cents to produce. I don't know why they build them so they break all the time. But there is a secret to installing it so that homeowners can't just go out an buy replacement motors." He smiled as he produced a short length of electrical wire with each end stripped off to reveal bare copper. “Watch this. If you don't connect two relays by putting this little beauty through these two holes” - he waved me in so I could see the unmarked penetrations on the face of the motor- “It won't work. That is what activates the motor. It is not on the instruction manual. That is the secret.” Sure enough, the second he fed the wire into both of them, the little handle began to lift on the side of the ice-maker, as if from the dead. Total time of repair might have been four minutes, tops. “What do I owe you?” I asked, dizzy with the prospect that there would be crushed ice by cocktail hour. “$144 for the service call, and $127 for the motor. Plus tax.” “That is almost three hundred bucks,” I said, dumfounded. “Yep. That is what it costs. Cash, check or credit card is good.” “I suppose the ice makes it worth it,” I said dubiously, writing a check on an account that I thought had some money in it. “It seems like kind of a rip-off, though.” Technician #0523266 smiled and picked up his bag. “Well, I did teach you the secret for free, didn't I? Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |