It had started with the gas range and oven, of dubious vintage, at one time perhaps a top-of-the-line appliance with still-gleaming stainless steel. Like an individual getting on in years, it had its predictable peculiarities. The oven temperature setting was about fifty degrees too high, so when he baked his Christmas cookies, he just recalibrated mentally. She instead found this immensely annoying. Then too, a very fine touch was required to light the burners on the range when the oven was on, something that he almost enjoyed as a challenge to his skills, but that proved highly frustrating for her.
Then, one holiday while a turkey was being roasted, the oven had a spell of forgetfulness and neglected to cycle the flame back on. He cajoled it into finishing the roast, but could no longer disagree that the oven needed replacement, and so they bought a shiny modern one with reliable controls. The old unit was taken away, presumably discarded, and the new one performed flawlessly.
The next unit was the dishwasher which had also come with the house over thirty years ago. It was of uncertain age, with the vagaries that senescence brings or, in a word, old. Each time it was run, some water would leak onto the kitchen floor, so that part of their operational procedure was to place a towel on the floor. Because of this flaw the washer was used less than it otherwise might have been. He never thought that to be too much of a problem; besides, washing dishes together was a social bond that often led to spirited conversation. He was overly fond of saying that they always had enough dishwashers, repeated just enough to be mildly annoying to their children.
She, on the other hand, was bothered by the need to pacify the dishwasher with the towel on the floor, and agitated for a new, trouble-free machine. For this, as well as other ageing appliances that she wanted to replace, he would jokingly ask whether she would want to do that with him as well, as he was getting on in years himself. But after another more serious leak, he had to accede to her wish that they replace it. The old unit was taken away, presumably discarded, and the new one performed flawlessly.
Or almost. To get the installation done, the service people needed three visits, the last one by a master plumber. Some days afterward he discovered that there was a leak because this high-level expert had not tightened the intake hose properly. Fortunately he had watched the work being done, and so knew exactly how to fix the problem. It was not the first time that he had seen professionals doing a less-than-perfect job - he recalled that after a set of window replacements he needed to re-assemble the opening lever to make it function properly.
Each time that he had to fix or improve on work that professionals had done, it strengthened his belief that anyone owning a house needed to be capable of performing repair work himself. Her contrasting view was that this ability was not necessary, and could be filled by calling in some qualified tradesmen. Throughout all the years and decades of house ownership, he and she continued to share this strong difference of conviction, with neither yielding to the other.
Their none-too-young house was heated with steam, which traveled through a small maze of heavy pipes to old-fashioned cast iron radiators in the various rooms of the two floors. The heating system would noisily announce its activity with some pinging and knocking caused by the condensed steam collecting in the pipes. Depending on their mood and wakefulness they would regard these sounds as either comfortingly familiar or annoyingly disruptive, like hearing the clumsy racket of a workman getting on in years, one seeking to perform a task with declining skills.
Physics decrees that steam cools into water and that, as this water collects in the radiators and pipes, with the pipes slightly and properly angled gravity will cause it to run back down to the boiler in the basement. But joints in pipes, just like joints in an ageing body, are opportunities for malfunction, and so it happened one morning that he heard her shout from the downstairs living room that there was water dripping from the ceiling. Ignoring her urging to call a plumber immediately, he saw that the drip came from an area not near any water pipe. There was a radiator just above on the next floor, and all that was needed was for him to tighten the radiator to its pipe, which meant that it was also a good time to tighten all other similar joints. For good measure, he put protective drip pans under each radiator joint, much like the absorptive pads that mildly incontinent elderly might wear.
There was another, but bigger, drip-catching basin in the attic, where condensation in the vent pipe would otherwise leak slowly into the second-floor hallway ceiling, and apparently had done so under the previous house ownership. His only task there, important but low-maintenance, was to empty the basin three times each winter.
The furnace and boiler that generated the steam demanded his continual attention as well, at least during the heating season. Every week he had to drain some water to flush out rust from the boiler. Afterward there was a slow drip from that drain, a drip that very ever so slowly lowered the water level in the boiler, so that eventually there would be too little water in it. That, together with an unpredictable shut-off valve for low water level, made long winter trips away from the house worrisome. Service people came at various times, cursed the tight space in which they had to work, made adjustments and replaced parts, but the frailties they tried to fix persisted in returning. Finally he thought of a solution - to simply plug the leaky drain with a cork. If she had known about the fragility of the heating system and his baby-sitting of it, she would have replaced the furnace immediately, but to him, it would have been like getting rid of an old acquaintance just because of a nasal drip.
Besides, one of his greatest triumphs, which cemented his by-now almost human relationship with the heating system was that, during a prolonged spell of extreme cold winter weather when the furnace refused to start, and when the waiting list for service applied only to old customers, and was very long even for those, he had been able to manipulate the regulator into getting the furnace going again. The problem never recurred, so how could he even think of discarding a unit that cooperated so helpfully at a time of real need?
To him, it was almost a point of honor to adapt to the inconvenience of monitoring, adjusting and repairing malfunctioning machines rather than discarding and replacing them. He knew that it was silly, really, to think of inanimate appliances as deserving respect like a humanly imperfect friend or close acquaintance, and even sillier to fight quixotic battles with her against throwing out things that could still function competently. After all, they lived in a throw-away society that thrived on disposable objects and disposable workers, to say nothing of the equally discardable acquired wisdom of elders. How could manufacturing facilities run and provide jobs if customers didn't throw out the old equipment and buy the new? He recalled hearing once, with depressing awe, a well-reasoned argument that it was good to waste food so that more could be produced, this to someone who had known hunger in his youth. And so the trash and garbage piles would keep growing, along with the newly unemployed but capable workforce. All this was no abstract argument to him - he too had been let go a number of times when his employer at the time consolidated or closed business units, or discontinued products. It's all a consequence of progress and competition - he mused - it's in the nature of life that everything and everyone wears out and gets replaced.
Which reminded him that it was actually the refrigerator that had been the first appliance to fail. In a classic case of the perverseness principle it had stopped functioning during a persistent heat wave, when it was most needed. The diagnosis was compressor failure, the equivalent of a heart attack. If a comparable compressor could be found at all, the transplant operation would cost altogether as much as a new refrigerator. So they quickly bought another. The old unit was taken away, presumably discarded, and the new one performed flawlessly.
As was the case, at a later time, with the clothes dryer, which he had kept on life support far past its expected replacement age. The drive belt that spun the big drying drum broke once, and the repair service had to install a replacement. Later, when the dryer stopped functioning once again, he traced the problem to a poor electrical contact, and kept the machine going for several more years. But then it seized up one day as if it had had a stroke, and would no longer turn at all. They bought another immediately; the old unit was taken away, presumably discarded, and the new one performed flawlessly.
Early years of deprivation had helped form his persistence in making do with what was in place, and he had acquired some skill with tools from his father, by observing and often helping him. His father's pride in workmanship and the virtue of self-sufficiency had made a strong and lasting impression on him, without the foolish pseudo-psychology of supposed male bonding. But to his wistful silent regret his own son, from youth to adulthood, resolutely avoided any contact with or interest in tools and repair work, treating it almost like a crime scene by retreating into invisibility.
And so he began to understand even better the odd kinship that he had with the house and its occupant appliances. They were at least passively accepting of his efforts, and gave pleasure by functioning better afterward. It seemed almost to be a rudimentary form of communication, even to the extent of the machines sometimes giving the appearance of acting like recalcitrant children before yielding.
His facility with tools was of great benefit as well at his last job before retirement. While his younger compatriots sat before computer displays, pecked at keyboards and pushed mice around the table, he climbed over, under and around mechanical equipment with some pride because he knew which end of a screwdriver to use.
Some home repair was, of course, beyond his capability. A set of roof leaks near the chimney required professionals, but confirming his bias, their work was severely flawed, so that it took several tries and a new roofing company to finally get the leaks under control. At about the same time, when he was in the attic checking on the effectiveness of the roofing repairs, he noticed that the vent pipe was dripping in yet another spot away from the catch-basin, and was causing some damage to the ceiling below. Close inspection showed ill-fitting pieces badly joined, as well as a clogged pipe, just one more poorly constructed assembly that had come with the old house. With some travail, he was able to clear the pipe and make a much better joint, good enough so that the catch-basin was no longer needed.
The house, when they first bought it, had looked somewhat worn and tired, with dreary carpeting, oddly-colored paint covering fine wood, and some ancient unaesthetic light fixtures. Soon their efforts had freshened and rejuvenated their new home. But now, decades later, some of that tiredness and wear had crept back. Here and there wallpaper curled off the wall at corners, some paint showed peeling, and thin cracks re-appeared in walls and ceilings. In some sense, it was like the comfort and familiarity of old scuffed but well-fitting shoes, or the sagging threadbare but warm jacket, but in time even those usually demand to be replaced. At her insistence he took on more maintenance and repair, and reluctantly agreed to engage tradesmen to carry out the other work. Renovation ruled: there was the unpleasantness of dust and dislocation, but the loose was tightened and cemented, the hard-to-move loosened, the rough made smooth, the dingy brightened, the worn-out and tattered removed for the vibrant new.
Finally the house sparkled and functioned like proverbial clockwork. No more drips to catch in buckets, no more drafty windows and doors to seal, no more appliances to tweak and monitor like balky children. She was quite content, but although this was all quite comfortable and convenient, he missed the human-like flaws of the old machines that he used to tend and coax into performing properly.
And then he realized that there was only one more thing left to replace.
Peter E. Schmidt