A long time ago and far away in my mind the lady next door used to come over to borrow mom's "wackum (wack-um) cleaner". She was from Germany and doing her best to drop the fv (fou-vey) from her English. So even if VACUUM was spelled with a V, she refused to say it with an "f" and consequently brought in the "w" sound. there ya go....German to go in 3 minutes or less.
I have this love-hate relationship with vacuum cleaners. And no, it has nothing to do with getting hickies. Vacuum cleaners cost a lot of money. Big bucks. And when they wear out, you have to have another, so then there are more big bucks out the window. In 30 years I have owned about 5 wackums. My first one, I loved to death. A Hoover canister. With a beater brush. Lasted for about 15 years. Dad liked it so much he bought mom one. Theirs sucked...but not like mine. Mine was a dandy. Eventually, though, it went the way of all suckless wackums and was delivered DOA to the local dump. Mind you, before they can be taken to the dump, I HAVE TO take them apart, replace belts, find clogs, re-build...the whole gammet of re-do. I just can not take it to the dump knowing there is the slightest possibility that it just might work....
This weekend....4 hours on a wackum. I found the clog.
This is my second bagless vacuum. I hate them. It is not natural to have to pull out the air-compressor to blow out the crap in the filters on these puppies. But ya gotta do what ya gotta do, right? It didn't fix my problem. I knew the next step was to unscrew every screw in the machine to find the clog.
On my way back in to the house from the garage, a wee voice in my head said, "Be sure to unplug it before you begin the surgery." Now, I have been known to ignore the voices in the past and I have done some stupid things that have caused things to break or me to get hurt. Not this time. I pulled the plug as I went by, picked up the vacuum cleaner and sat down on the floor. As I flipped it over in my lap, the stupid thing turned on. CRAP! "Okay," I said to myself. "Okay, that must be the left over juice appliances have when they are unplugged. Its gone. And it is okay to continue to work on it." Now I knew I was lying to myself...appliances do not retain left over juices when you unplug them. (TV's do, but that is because of the picture tube...and yes, you can get killed messing with TV's even after they have been unplugged.) But I was satisfied with the lie I told myself. I bought it. And as I flipped it over again in my lapped, the danged thing came on AGAIN. Okay. I looked back over to where I had unplugged it...."it" was actually a pair of clippers that I had been using earlier and yes they were unplugged. I followed the cord from the wackum to the outlet it was plugged into and yes it was plugged in. DUH.
Not only am I lucky to say, I am HAPPY, no, ELATED to say I didn't get my fingers stuck in the wackum. And I don't care if you think I am stupid for sharing such a stupid story. At least I have all my fingers entact.
And I did find the clog, removed it, and the happy wackum is back at it.
YAY.
buenos noches. (that does not mean good nacho's)
2 comments:
Ouch.. Be careful.. You coulda lost a digit like Jim. We went back to the bag type just because of stuff like that. And we are gonna get that canister type soon.
We are on wackum #4 or 5 in our 16 1/2 years of marriage, so you're doing better than we are. My favorite was one we "borrowed" from the pharmacy we worked at - a Dirt Devil industrial and it was killer, but it, too, died and we could never find something comparable.
I am so impressed by the commercials for the Dysons... think they work as well as they say? They are stinkin' expensive... might have to suck it up and try it next time, though. (Pun intended!)
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