Family tool box

April 17, 1995
During last winter’s few weeks of cold, our Sunday School teacher already had scheduled a busy week when he received his water bill of $77. “The water company said, ‘Man, you either have a bad leak or your wife has been taking a lot of baths.’

She wasn’t living in the tub, but I didn’t have time to find the leak in the line until the weekend. So I connected a water hose to the main line and ran it to the house.” “Water from a garden hose tastes awful, but it washes clothes and works for showering and shaving, unless the temperature drops below freezing overnight.

“I woke Tuesday morning in a rush to get into town for an early meeting and couldn’t shave. The hose was frozen. At 5:30 a.m. I was in my front lawn, flashlight in one hand and my wife’s hair dryer in the other, bent over the garden hose trying to thaw it enough to get water to shave.”

What! Another husband raiding his wife’s bureau for her blow dryer? I thought that only my husband did stuff like that. The first time my hair dryer left my possession we lived in the cold, northern parts of Indiana. With the thawing and freezing of a windy spring, and dripping of the eaves the door knob froze in place. I woke up to the hum of my hair dryer in the foyer warming the door before it dried my hair.
Here in Arkansas, when our dry wall required several layers of plaster to fix a hole, my live-in repair man smeared on the first layer of “mud” and looked at it impatiently. The directions recommended waiting 24 hours for complete drying.

That was about 23 hours and 24 minutes longer than he wanted to wait.

Next thing I knew, my pristine, white, plastic blow dryer was laying beside the bucket of plaster with the off-white mud on its handle.
The man of the house says it worked fine – except when he held the dryer in one position too long, it built up heat triggering the safety off switch. Using the hair dryer, he applied the second and third layer of plaster that night plus two layers of paint.

I tolerated my hair dryer being used for quick repairs to the dry wall. I was not so patient when a wintry wind seeped into the house and he used it to pre-warm the bed before he stuck his toes between the sheets at night. I prefer a cool, crisp feeling to my sheets.

I have to say this for my husband, he takes good care of his tools.

When they break, he repairs them. After the blow dryer died one morning, I tossed it in the trash. He pulled it out, laid it tenderly on the kitchen counter and opened it up. “Only a bit of hair caught on the fan,” he said one time. Another time it was “a wire is loose.”

After he saved the dryer from death and burial so many times, I decided it must be his for life. Recently, our daughter and I picked out a new blow dryer, just for our hair. I stuck the old one in the shop among all of my husband’s other tools. If that one isn’t powerful enough, I have a great idea for a father’s day gift.


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