For Thursday, February 9, 2006 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 783 words



Odds on odd


I believe in good luck. It is possible to be in the right place at the right time. I never was optimistic enough to believe it could happen twice in two hours, but I am now.
This is no earth-shaking story of me buying the winning numbers to the power-ball lottery and then finding in my change one of the 40 existing 1943 copper pennies. Though, that’s not a bad run of luck.
This is a homeowner’s tale about saving my house, a tale to make insurance agents chew their lips in anxious relief.
Gino and I were installing new floor tile in a seldom-used downstairs bathroom. We had just poured liquid floor leveler and I was standing around uselessly by the door watching Gino sprawled on his hands and knees spreading the mud around with a trowel.
From my unique vantage point of leaning against the door jamb holding a cup of coffee, I spotted an odd thing. In the center of my bathroom ceiling, a drop of water formed. It wobbled for a second, then dripped down into the floor leveler. It was the first drop to fall. Then another drop fell. And another.
“What the…?” I put my finger into the next collecting drop and it ran down my hand and puddled up along my wristband. “Where is this coming from?”
“Where is what coming from?” asked Gino, looking up. “Oh. You have a leak. What’s overhead?”
“Eh. The refrigerator.”
“Well, then, your refrigerator is probably leaking.” Gino is matter-of-fact about the obvious. He got up. We went upstairs. The refrigerator looked fine. No water on the kitchen floor. No tell-tale sign that anything was leaking, unless one was fortunate enough to be downstairs in the seldom-used bathroom.
Gino rolled the refrigerator out of its cubby. Fssssssst! Behind the ‘fridge, water was spewing forcefully from the coupling on the rubber ice-maker hose. It had just popped its gasket. Gino turned off the water and the leak was fixed.
“You are so lucky,” said Gino. “If we hadn’t been working tonight, that could have leaked for days. Your ceiling would have collapsed. Your framing would be damaged.”
“I saw the first drop,” I said.
“Geez, oh, man.” Gino laughed as he wiped up the water in the narrow cubby, while I stood there. We bought replacement steel flex-hose at the hardware store. Gino installed it. We tore away a bit of water-damaged hard cardboard at the bottom of the ‘fridge to fit in the higher-gauge hose. Problem solved.
We cleaned up for the night and rented a movie. The kids came over. The whole family moved to the living room with snacks and beverages. We turned out the kitchen light.
Normally, I don’t get up once I settle into my psychiatrist-couch lounge. It’s my segue to sleep and then to bed. However, this night I did get up, early. I remembered that I had bought some Odwallas at 2 for $4. When I opened the refrigerator, I noticed that the door was hot to the touch. Not warm. Hot. The center frame between the doors was hotter.
“Yeo, Gino. Come here. Check this out. Something’s wrong.”
“What now? I’m watching the movie,” he said as he was coming.
“My refrigerator is about to burn up.” He felt it and pulled back.
“It sure is.” He rolled the ‘fridge away from the wall again and yanked the plug. Heat radiated up from the motor and condenser like an over-fired barbecue. “Hm. I don’t know what happened. This may be too much for me to fix.”
“Maybe you pulled a wire by accident,” I volunteered.
He gave me his purse-lipped, crinkly eyed Gino look. “I didn’t pull a wire.”
The wife, kids, and I were standing there thinking aloud, “Well, I guess we better start eating. We’ll eat until morning and then call Sears.”
All this while, Gino is behind the refrigerator with a flashlight, removing the cardboard paneling at the bottom. “Oh, man! Geez, oh, man.”
“What, what, what?”
“I found your problem. Look for yourself.”
I bent down and peered into the back of the refrigerator. Inside, with its back legs in the air, was a former mouse, his head stuck firmly in the fan. He was jammed in there pretty tight. I needed needle-nosed pliers to extract him. We plugged the refrigerator back in. It purred coolly to life, fan spinning. Another disaster diverted.
“You are so lucky you bought those Odwallas,” said Gino. “I’ve seen refrigerators catch on fire and burn down the kitchen.”
“That mouse must have just crawled in there through the bigger hole we made.”
“He must have,” agreed Gino. “What are the odds of that?”