My little corner of the world

Our stove died last night. It’s kinda old. Wait, ‘vintage’ sounds better. It’s one of those old school drop-in cooktops with push buttons - yes, I said push buttons. In the middle of prepring a new recipe - beef and rice noodle soup - the whole push-button control thingie made a real loud popping sound not once, but three times. Soon I caught a whiff of that electrical smell. Fortunately, no flames. Hmph. I was distraught - what am I going to do without the stove? Cook in the - ugh- microwave?? I think not.

Meanwhile, Michael’s over in the corner doing the happy dance ’cause he hates that old stove. He has already had to have the wiring fixed in the push-button control panel before, and he said that if it ever messed up again it wasn’t going to get fixed.

So, after a quick glance at cooktops at Home Depot’s website, off we go to the store. We look around the appliance department for a while, and of course there are no sales people to be found. We did see a cute little sparrow that got in the store somehow, and he was cheerily chirping away by the microwaves. We finally saw an employee walking by, pushing this cart thing, and we asked him for help. He very helpfully offered to get Ed for us. He tried to call him on his phone, but when he didn’t answer, he went off in search of him.

Fifteen minutes later, Cart Dude comes back. He never was able to track Ed down.

Did I mention that Ed was paged over the intercom about six times by at least two different employees while we waited?

Thirty minutes after we arrived, guess who finally appears. Yup! Ed!! Good ol’ Ed. He was able to find the drop-in we wanted. In stainless steel. I am happy. I will have a stove! I can resume my favorite hobby of preparing strange things for my family to eat!!!

But, of course, we are going to have to wait for an electrician to come and hook it up. Seems the Home Depot people assume that our vintage wiring is probably going to need the services of a licenced electrician to bring everything up to 2006 wiring codes.

I’m going to miss that stove. Yes, it was temperamental - one of the eyes didn’t work on the ‘3′ setting, another eye didn’t work on ‘Low’ or ‘Warm’, and yet another didn’t work on ‘2.’ But I sure am going to miss the quirkiness. It was like me - not quite normal.

When I told my mom today about our stove, she got all happy too. Maybe even happier than Michael when he was bopping around the kitchen in joy. I probably should mention that Mom & Dad have an old cooktop just like ours, only about 10 years newer and in a lovely shade of Harvest Gold. Their version has lost some of the button covers over the years. It’s scary looking, the way that every few buttons there’s just a metal stick poking up. Did you guess that replacements are no longer available? Right you are! Not even on eBay, either. Anyway, Mom will get all my button covers off of our old stove. And when we go visit my parents, I’ll at least see all those buttons and be reminded of Ol’ Faithful.

RIP 1963-2006