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February 25, 2008
Dereliction of Duty
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| Image: Artist's rendering of demonic oven that self destructed
in November, nearly destroying yams and Thanksgiving. Actual oven is all electric. Some of you may recall the trouble my household faced last Thanksgiving when our oven decided to become self aware. Once it realized where and who it was, it decided life was no longer worth cooking for. It entered a period of self destructive behavior. Before we could organize an intervention it had committed self-cleaning Seppuku (see post here). Its manner of death was to lock itself with yams inside and ramp up to Super Nova temperature. It would not unlock, cycling power would not clear the error. I had to break open the oven door to save the yams. I'm a pretty handy guy. I installed my own multi-circuit irrigation system, outdoor lighting, and lawn. I run electrical and phone lines, frame walls, hang doors, hang drywall, and do other things that would make Bob Villa proud. I'm not terribly good at any of it, but my wife doesn't know that. You'd think I would have taken care of the blown-up oven by now. But I hadn't. Since I decided not to write this blog on weekends I found myself with extra time on Saturday. I got out my massive tool set and started to remove the oven (phillips and standard screwdrivers were needed). My wife stopped me. She pointed out that my spare time was not an indication that the preparatory work had been done to replace the oven. The replacement would be gas, and no gas line existed, nor had someone been contacted to install the line. The replacement would be a less expensive self standing oven that was 1" wider than the existing insert (and therefore 1" wider than our cabinets). Nobody had identified the manner in which the cabinets would be shortened by 1"(sledge hammer is my preference). So removing the oven would initiate a string of decision making that nobody was prepared to be responsible for. But I already had my tools out. I decided to go ahead and do some exploratory disassembly. Within a few minutes I told my wife "I can have this out in no time". This statement would normally initiate the process of locating and purchasing the replacement oven, shaving the cabinets down with a dozen types of tools, and hiring a gas line installer. But my wife asked a startling question. She asked if I'd found out what was broken. I had never bothered to look. You're all expecting this story to end in misery. Fire and smoke, a man and his tools defeated would be the obvious ending. Failure is funny. Men breaking things, or quitting in despair, is what we all expect. That's how men are often portrayed in today's commercials or other media. We're comical and lack wisdom and skill. To the contrary I repaired the failed mechanism after about 10 minutes. We had oven-baked cookies that night. It had been over 90 days since the oven broke, and it took about a half hour to fix it. The only excuse I have for not fixing it sooner is that it failed so spectacularly and I assumed it was gone for good. The moral of this story is self-reliance. We should all repair our own things. Or at least give it a try. I went 90 days without oven-baked cookies because I forgot to fulfill my household duties as a man. Don't let the same happen to you. The price is too high. Later that night my wife told me the remote for the TV had locked up. She asked if I knew what was wrong with it. I pressed a couple of buttons and cleared it so it worked again. She was clearly impressed and asked what I had done. I told her it was man-knowledge. Like the arcane workings of an oven's innards, or the reason my dad had a 2" diameter socket in his tool box, or the ability to read the cryptic pages of a 1964 automobile shop manual, the knowledge belongs to men. This knowledge is our purpose, and our duty. Men don't talk in soft and lilting voices, if we bother to talk at all. We wear clothes that don't match and were intended not to. We drive one-handed, window down, and elbow jutted out for the world to see. This week, to pay homage to men everywhere, I will hang on my garage wall my three slightly different sized sledge hammers. They are named Mjolnir, Destroyer, and Fred. Before I do that I've got to change a diaper and get my laundry done for the week. Because a man's work is never done. |
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CI Challenge: Can you guess what it is? Winner: The keeper of all knowledge useful to men and manliness, Gregg Payne, artist, viking, chieftain. See comments below for the answer. |
Posted by Lon at February 25, 2008 06:58 AM
Comments
Pickle fork for popping tie rod ends.
Posted by: Gregg Payne at February 25, 2008 07:25 AM
Gregg, thats not a pickle fork, its a "jumbo fairy shrimp" fork.
Posted by: Anthony at February 25, 2008 07:59 AM
Gregg Payne, keeper of man-knowledge. And avid user of the pickle-fork, one of mankind's greatest automobile tools. I added an image of a pickle fork in action above.
Lon
Posted by: Lon at February 25, 2008 11:41 AM
During the holidays, the one thing I do to acknowledge the holiday season is to bake cookies according to my Mom's recipes.
Last year, when I had a multibatch evening planned, the oven crapped out. Turned out to be the lower element. I popped it out (without cutting power to the appliance, alas, which pretty definitively threw the breaker and a shower of sparks as well), got a replacement the next day, installed it, cycled the breaker, and voila, cookies.
Any technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic. Such is man-knowledge, even when rudimentary.
Posted by: Alan Chamberlain at February 25, 2008 09:54 PM
Alan,
It may be that had my oven gone down when we were baking cookies my drive to repair it would have been amplified. I've never yearned for yams.
I assume you popped out the heating element with a pickle fork. That's another great use for that tool.
Lon
Posted by: Lon at February 26, 2008 06:15 AM
No, as with so many of the manly arts, I just pulled on it until I achieved the desired outcome...
Posted by: Alan Chamberlain at February 26, 2008 10:29 AM