Mr. Fix It

Nikki Pelezo / Dirt Roads

Charlie and I have been married 30 + years.  As we are getting older we are starting to look alike and we sound alike over the phone, but that’s where it ends.  Our minds still chug along at different speeds.

Here are two examples:

We are at one of those out of the way junkyards that cater to mentally challenged ‘yard art’ people.  In my hand I have a wad of barbed wire resembling a bird’s nest.  I look into a wet moldy box of tools and spy five pair of rusty needle nose pliers.  I say to Charlie “Look, if I put these rusted needle nose pliers down in this nest they will look like birds waiting to be fed.”  Charlie shrugs and we buy the junk.  Are you with me so far?  We take the junk home, Charlie stretches out the wad of barbed wire and WD-40s’ the needle nose pliers.  He puts the items in his tool shed as good stuff and not for yard art.

A few years ago we were staying for a month up in the Seattle area as Camp Ground hosts (another complete story on its own) and we came upon a non-working 1937 Maytag wringer washing machine at a garage sale.  A real beauty.  I make over the washing machine telling Charlie that this would look wonderful on my front porch with impatiens growing out of the tub.  Charlie shrugs and we buy the washing machine.  He takes the dining table out of our 5th wheel and puts in the wringer washing machine for the 2,600 mile trip home.

We arrive back in good old East Texas and he immediately overhauls the washing machine.  I now have a 1937 Maytag wringer washing machine that actually works.  It is sitting on my back porch way too good to put on my front porch to plant flowers in the tub. And it will be a cold day in hell when I use the damn thing.