My physician daughter relayed a joke told, on hospital rounds, by one of her patients. After a plumber does some work for a doctor, he hands him the bill. The doctor takes a look-see and passes the bill back to the plumber, informing, "I'm sorry, but I can't pay that bill." With great compassion, the plumber replies, "It's all right. I wouldn't have been able to pay it either, when I was a doctor."
Now, I presume that the patient was a plumber, which was lost on my daughter who hasn't been a homeowner for long, just three, short years. But it wasn't lost on me.
We found ourselves in quite the plumbing predicament earlier this year. During the hard freeze in February, we cranked up the gas logs in our fireplace, using the valve which is mired in the old St. Louis brick used to build our chimney when our home was constructed in 1993. It had not given us a lick of trouble over the last 25 years, the duration of our ownership. Digressing, my husband Rodney and I are the anomaly in our neighborhood where folks switch houses like we change clothes. When we find a good thing, we stick with it. But unbeknownst to us, trouble was brewing.
It wasn't long after the February freeze that I detected a malodorous odor that smelled an awfully lot like gas. The die was cast. In a jiff, the gas company shut off all gas to our home. With it went the central heat, two hot water heaters, and our commercial stove. Our only salvation was the weather had turned temperate, and the hot water heater in my mother's wing is electric. But we were still left with the matter of the Vulcan, which was totally out of commission. I had no means of making meals and little comfort in dining out during the thick of the pandemic.
But we were equal to the strain. With the promise of plumbing, just a weekend away, my better half retrieved an artifact from my mother's attic. A Lady Winsted Broil-R-Ange Combo by Capitol, circa 1946. I'm pretty certain that Momma told me, once upon a time, that it was a wedding gift. She and my father were married post-war in February of 1946 which makes the contraption, according to my best calculation, seventy-five years old. Back to basics, it turned out to be the one thing, that saved the day - actually our weekend.
Dubious, I wondered as we dusted it off, "Does it work?" Of course, it did which lent credence to the old mantra - "they don't make 'em like they used to." In a flash, we were cooking on the vintage portable stove. I made homemade broccoli soup, a family favorite which hit the spot, while Rodney whipped up his savory hot chocolate, for which he is famous, late at night. Both helped keep us cozy as we were without central heat. Grateful for Rodney's ingenuity and his attic find, I reflected on how we came to have it. Lady Winsted represents the value of saving, something we're not short on at our house.
Contrast us with good friends who, for over a decade, lived just across our cul-de-sac. We hit it off from the start with the young couple who, with three precious children in tow, moved in many moons ago and raised their family here. But we learned to agree to disagree on one thing - saving. Good as gold, Robyn was, and is, what I would call a minimalist. The wife of a physician and native New Orleanian, she spent her time paring property down while I spent mine perpetuating the past, treasuring and reviving old things. And it has paid off in today's climate, with huge demand for and short supply of everything from nuts to bolts.
But it was several years ago that I first noticed that when Robyn needed something it was often to us she turned. And whatever it was, Rodney and I - oldfangled as we are - usually had it stored away, in some nook or cranny. I imagine my neighbor thought she had stepped back a century or so at our house. Once she realized I didn't cotton to stark, contemporary style, she scooted across the cul-de-sac with what-nots that her grandfather had hand crafted and other interesting relics including early American fire pokers and wedges for log splitting - offering them like candy to kids from the country. We are not allergic to the antiquated which we've found comes in handy once in a blue moon.
The 1946 portable range of my folks saw us through the gas shut-off earlier this year. Well, that and expert local plumber Ronnie Fussell, who was professional in addition to reasonable, unlike the physician turned plumber. Once Ronnie had come and gone, we were back in business. Hallelujah, we had hot water! And our Vulcan stove fired up like a champ. Its exhaust fan sounds like an old Boeing 747 did on take-off. But we haven't forgotten our old friend Lady Winsted who, once again, is resting easy in the attic, awaiting another time when the chips are down and we go back to basics.
