Sheltering at Home Week Seven, May 2, 2020
I did it. I let the Maytag Man into the house. In the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.
I also let in a plumber, a handyman, and a water clean-up specialist. Four service people in the space of two days. It felt risky. We’re supposed to be isolating themselves after all. I did it anyway.
The plumber was there to replace the leaky water heater. The handyman came by to to rip up the soggy carpeting. And the very nice man from Restoration Clean Up Company stopped by (free of charge, repeat, free of charge) to tell us how to mitigate the minor water damage.
The water heater was irreparable. It had to go.
The dampened carpet was getting moldy. It had to be thrown away.
As for the washing machine, Jon wanted to just get rid of the old thing. Buy a new one and be done with it.
But, me, I hate to throw away a perfectly good appliance. That homely old Maytag had served us well since 1997. Maybe it was good for another two years. Five years? Why get rid of it if it’s still raring to go?
The Maytag man did what Maytag men are famous for. He pulled a part from his truck and repaired our 23-year-old washer for 152 bucks.
He wasn’t really a Maytag Man, of course. He was a neighborhood appliance repairman who makes a point of carrying that particular Maytag part around in his truck — the one that turns the machine off and on when the lid is raised and lowered.
He arrived in the nick of time: Jon’s entire sock wardrobe and mine were waiting in an overflowing laundry basket up in our bedroom.
That Nasty Coronavirus
I did not want to let all those strangers into our house. It seemed risky.
But they all showed up wearing masks. They each stood a careful six-plus feet away as we talked. And they were kind. Kind! They seemed to feel a genuine need to help us out, to come to our rescue, to do their jobs.
Like nurses and grocery clerks, mail carriers and field workers, these four service people put their health and maybe even their lives on the line to be there for Jon and me.
Why would anybody do that?
To make a living, of course.
But it felt like more. Over the two days those four masked men came and went from our house, I felt a simple human kindness at work.
Yeah, democracy and the rule of law are under siege in the U.S. right now. And the rest of the world is not looking so good either, politically speaking.
But the human race? It’s hanging in there. It hasn’t forgotten how to be kind. Not yet.
More Sheltering at Home Chronicles at “I Miss My Friends, but I Miss My Acquaintances More.” Also, “Will Donald Trump Be the Death of Me? Pardon My Rant as I Shelter in Place.”
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Yea! The Maytag washer survived and lives on for a few more hundreds of loads and your needed work got done. And, everyone is healthy. That’s the most important point. Cheers!
The fans I had running for four days are gone, and we have our den back, which is where I tune into Zumba classes on TV. I have to dance around the hole in the carpeting, but there are worse things.
Great news! Those older Maytags are the best. Stay healthy.
You’ll notice that the dryer is a different style and brand from the washer. It went with the not-so-great Kenmore washer that preceded our Maytag. Part of the reason I didn’t want to get a new washer is that they take so long to do a load — 120 minutes. Argh. Probably that has to do with energy efficiency, which I *should* be considering. But with all that’s going on right now, I just didn’t have the spirit to process all those plusses and minuses, make a good decision and take the leap to a new washer.