Fantastic!
free photo JC Penney
“Karen, the dryer won’t shut off!”
I rushed out of the bedroom, down the hall, and into the laundry room. “What are you talking about? This is a brand-new machine.”
“I’m telling you,” shouted my husband Charles, “the darned thing keeps going and going. I don’t know what happened. I tossed in a load of clothes and now . . . well, listen for yourself.”
I opened the door of the dryer. The drum was still. No motion whatsoever, and yet I could hear a peculiar soft hum in the background. How unnerving. One more thing to handle in a week that was already bulging with problems and challenges as we moved into our new home.
Charles looked at his watch. “Too late for a repair call now. We’ll have to get on this first thing in the morning. It’s a good thing it’s under warranty.”
“Wait!” I snapped my fingers. “The circuit breaker box. Let’s try to shut it off by tripping the breaker. At least that way we won’t be in any danger from something overheating or shorting out.”
“Great idea!” Charles opened the metal box and ran his finger down the names of appliances and rooms. When he reached “dryer” he clicked the switch to OFF. But nothing changed. The faint hum persisted.
I felt my pulse jump. It was nearly 10:00. We were about to go to bed for much-needed sleep and now this. I tapped Charles on the arm. “Let’s pray about this. We need Holy Spirit wisdom to get through the night.”
We prayed and then slipped into bed. But first Charles propped open the door to the dryer in case it might overheat while we were asleep.
The next morning, after a fitful night of getting up and down checking to see if I smelled smoke, Charles called the appliance company. The service rep was confounded. She’d never heard of a dryer not shutting off, especially when someone tripped the breaker. She made an appointment for a technician to come out right away because this was an emergency.
That afternoon a young man in a blue work jacket with the name Jason sewed to the front pocket showed up at our door. He pulled out the dryer, checked all points, and tinkered with this and that while Charles and I stood aside, nearly holding our breath.
Then he stood up and shook his head from side to side. “This dryer is in perfect condition,” he said. “I don’t know what to tell you. I hear the noise too, but it’s not the dryer, you can be sure of that.”
My voice bumped up an octave. “No, we can’t!” I blurted. “I’ve been up half the night with worry. You can’t leave till you help us. What are we going to do? I have company coming next week, and we’ll have extra laundry for days.”
Jason breathed a sigh, and then brushed his hand over a set of switches next to the counter on the right side of the dryer. Click! Click! Click! The moment he touched the third one, the whirring noise ceased—just like that.
“What did you do?” Charles asked.
“Amazing!” I exclaimed.
“Looks as if this third switch is a fan of some kind,” the young man said. “Not sure where it goes, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the dryer.”
I slumped against the wall behind me. “Thank you. I’m totally embarrassed but completely thankful too.” My face turned pink.
“I’m the culprit,” Charles admitted. “Guess I bumped the switch this morning when I opened the cabinet above.”
The three of us had a good laugh as Jason packed up his toolbox. “There’s no charge,” the young repairman said. “It seems this fan is there to cool off the dryer as it spins. But it’s not from our company.”
I sighed in relief. Apparently it came with the house!
Charles reached into his pocket, pulled out a five-dollar bill and pressed it into Jason’s free hand. “Have a coffee or a Coke on us,” he said. “We’re heading back to bed for a good day’s sleep!”
~
Make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge (2 Peter 1:5).
LOL…that made me giggle Karen, and I’m laughing with you not at you I promise. 😀
Don’t you love it when a frustration goes from a problem to a blessing with the turn of a switch? Teehee!
Smiles, BRC
Thanks for enjoying my ‘fantastic’ story! 😉
So much fun for us to read but it certainly wasn’t fun for you to go through. Life can be crazy! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Kathy!
Great story, funny and yet I am sorry you lost a nights rest! It made me think of the kitchen floor when we moved to a rental house in Frankfort. No noise but the flooring (some kind of linoleum)seemed to be crumbling each time I mopped it. I talked with the owner of the house, she checked with the floor covering company because the flooring was NEW! What to do? you would never guess! She called me and said they told her to have me pour fresh whole cows milk on the floor, let it stand for a few hours and then mop up any that remained and it should be good as new! She said she had found a cow if I was willing to try it! She brought a gallon of fresh warm milk to me, I had dressed to “go to town” I poured the milk all over the floor and walked out the door and went shopping! When I got home around noon I could not believe what I saw! There was not a drop of milk that I could see anywhere, the floor was clean and there was no mild odor!! I called my friend up the street and she died laughing. Later she told me she called her husband at work (he worked in construction with lots of cement) to tell him and she said he did not laugh and simply said: “Fran, we pour fresh whole milk on concrete all the time!” I lived in that house for many more years and the floor always looked really nice! THEN I remembered a friend whose family had a dairy farm tell me one time she always wanted to ‘accidently’ spill a gallon of fresh milk on her kitchen floor as it made a great shine!
(don’t you get tired of my “stories”?)
Just happy your house did not catch on fire!!
Love to you. Margaret
Love this story too, Margaret. Never would have guessed that milk could have been used that way.
Thanks again, Karen for another great story! I could use a happy ending like this one as I’m dealing with an ice machine in my older refrigerator today!
I can hear the ice dropping into the storage container but the mechanism that pushes the ice out into a glass, as well as the container that normally comes apart in order to empty out a larger amount of ice into a cooler, both seem to be frozen (pardon the pun!). I’d like to do some trouble shooting before calling a repair person but no amount of prayer or pushing the release button will open the container! Right now, I’m sensing a prompting in my spirit to wait on God’s timing and instead of rushing headlong into an expensive repair or replacement I’m thanking Him for the blessing of a refrigerator that keeps my food cold…and heading to my pantry to dig out some “old school” ice cube trays!
Thanks, Glenda. I’ve had a go-round with my ice maker too. Decided to shut it off and make ice cubes the good old way with trays.
Cute story. Even a mishap brings knowledge from God’s Word as your encouragement at the end with 2 Peter. Plus,God prob orchestrated the whole thing to bring you two together again with the threefold cord. Maybe Jason needed the blessing of joining in on your mishap. (maybe he was five bucks short for whatever reason. Who knows? (God does.) LOL Thanks for sharing.
Great to hear from you, Jim.
I just have to say I love your story and all of the comments too. I don’t have one to add , but probably could if I thought long enough. We all get into these “duh” moments once in a while. Thanks for giving me a smile today!
Glad to bring you a smile, Etta Mae.