Thawing the memories of an old freezer
By BILL DUNCAN
The View From Here
So help me if I live to be a hundred, which is entirely possible at my age, I will never understand women. They cry over the damnest things.
Ever since my wife read a flyer inside the Pacific Power and Light bill offering $30 for any old, inefficient freezers, she bugged me to allow Pac Power to haul off our 48-year-old chest freezer that was in the workshop taking up space and hiking the electric bill. Pac Power said it was part of the Energy Trust of Oregon that was buying up old energy hogs and promised a $30 reward when the customer agreed to recycle energy wasting refrigerators and freezers.
In the last few years, the freezer had only been used to store frozen blackberries and some odds and ends of foodstuffs. Otherwise its flat top was a handy workshop bench and was cluttered
with miscellaneous tools and stuff.
My job was to defrost it. Remember it is 48 years old and the defrosting was done manually, meaning scraping built up freezer ice from its sides. I did defrost it and cleaned it out then called for an Energy Trust truck to haul it way. Those arrangements were made, but the pickup time was during a period when I was at a newspaper plant reading page proofs. When I returned home the freezer was gone and my wife was inside the house crying.
So help me I will never understand women. Sobbing she told me I just didn’t understand the sentimental attachment she had to that old albatross. It had been part of the family for almost 50 years, purchased from Kunin & Sons of Los Angeles as part of a Home Food Plan along with a lifetime warranty protection plan on the freezer. I assume the lifetime warranty is still valid today, even through I don’t think Kunin & Sons is still in business.
At the time we bought the food plan that came with the freezer, I was working for daily newspapers in Los Angeles and the home food plan was ideal to feed a large family on a reporter’s salary. If Kunin & Sons is still around, my wife and I could give their freezer a solid endorsement.
It was still running at top performance after 48 years of constant use. The only time it was ever unplugged and empty was when we transported it first to Northern California and seven years later to Roseburg, Oregon. It never needed a repair and was still plugged in when the Jaco Environmental crew loaded the monster into a truck and hauled it and 48 years of memories down my gravel driveway and sent my wife to tears.
I will lay odds that I will never see any of that $30 I worked so hard to get.
One of our sons was only two-years-old when we invested in the food plan and got the freezer as part of the deal. He still lives in Northern California. My wife called him long distance to cry on his shoulder as the truck with the freezer entered Garden Valley Road en route to wherever old freezers go to thaw out in this green world.
My son was stunned by her sentimentality, but managed to close the conversation with:
“Mom, if it is any comfort I am still around.”
He probably doesn’t understand women any better than I do.
(Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, Oregon 97470)
January 13th, 2009 at 1:35 am
I was donating my old freezer (today) to charity. A truck will pick it up tomorrow 1/13/09. I purchased a new set (refrig/freezer) for my wife this last Christmas. During the phone interview to schedule the pick up, the organizer for charity (or recycling), asked a series of questions including who the manufacturer was. With the wife on the phone relaying the question, I thought “Who is the heck is the mfr of that old thing in the driveway awaiting pick up?’ One would think it would be something I would recollect (or my wife), after going into to it several thousand times. I’ve had it (and toted it around) to all three homes I’ve owned! Anyway, I could remember (if I ever knew), just who did make the unit, so I actually went out side, more for curiousity than to provide this very unnecessary tidbit of info requested by the pick up folks. It was at this time I read ‘Kunin & Sons’. That’s when I decided to ‘google’ it, and came up with suprisingly few hits. Anyway, I understand Bill’s wife’s reaction.
I share that kind of unexplainable sentimentality alluded to in the article above. Working for Anheuser-Busch and just retiring after 34 years, this freezer was given to me when I was in my late 20’s back in the early 80’s by a fellow Mgr at the LA Plant. At that time (about 25 years ago I’d say), it looked ancient. I thought, ‘what the heck’ it’s free. We’ll, it has never missed a beat in 25+ years. It’s my guess it’ll outlast the new
‘professional series’, Frigidaire I just purchased. Yeah, it’s kind of like throwing out an old friend who never once failed you. Ridiculous I know, but it’s true. thx, Bob