May 2, 2016 (Monday)
When I was a child living with my grandparents, we had an “ice box.” No, it was not a refrigerator. We bought ice in 25-pound blocks for the ice box. We had a special model; it had a water tank in its middle partition, and a little faucet at the front for drawing cool drinking water. It also had a drain pan underneath, to dispose of melted ice.
When my sisters and I were living with our parents, we had a real refrigerator. Like many models of that era, the coils were designed to be a decorative series of circles on top of the box. There were ice trays in the refrigerator, but no freezer compartment as such. As time went by, people graduated from the “coils-on-top” to models with coils in back or at the bottom, almost resting on the floor but hidden from view by a front panel.
A few years back, we thought it was time to buy a new refrigerator because ours was not cooling very well, but Dwight investigated the coils beneath, and found them covered with lint. After cleaning them, the “fridge” began working well again. This is really something, because we bought this refrigerator, a side-by-side with ice maker, when we moved into this house about this time of year..46 years ago! It’s still working, keeping milk cold and ice cream frozen, after nearly half a century. Hard to believe. And it was made in the good old U.S.A.
The ice maker required repairs several times, and finally we bought a new one. It, too, had the same defect in design, and after repairing it a number of times, we finally just removed it. We don’t use a lot of ice anyway. Wanda used to fill pots with water and place them in the freezer we have in the garage, and if we wanted ice, we chipped it with an ice pick. If we want more, we can buy a sack. The ice maker is gone, but the refrigerator itself still works great after all these years. Our friend, Frank Wix, kept the “fridge” repaired when necessary. Without him, I suppose we would have probably replaced our avocado buddy. He kept it going.
If it breaks down today, it will have served us long beyond what may have been expected.
It has given us “above and beyond” service.