February 26, 2018

Reply to any old thing you see here by emailing me at john.oconnor@eagleradio.net. We will mention your responses next week.

Greetings and salivations, it’s time for Week 341 of What In the Heck Am I Gonna Write About This Week, brought to you in part this week by a generous grant from the Institute for the Indecisive. Their proud motto says it all: “ We’re not sure what we stand for, but we think it’s pretty good.”

Well, you’re probably used to my occasional rants (well, ‘rants’ sounds a little harsh, maybe ‘observations’ would be better) about some things in our contemporary age not being what “they’re cracked up to be.” (Ah, THAT’S a good old expression, by gum.)

One perfect example is the new ‘high efficiency’ clothes washers. We’ve had one for five months now, and each time I use it I think ‘I should have bought that one remaining standard model they had in the store.’ You know the type: big old agitator in the middle, a few simple controls on top and a reasonably fast cycle. Sure, it twisted your jeans, and shirts into unrecognizable soggy masses, but by and large it WORKED. You just untangled all your stuff, tossed it into the dryer and life was good.

The ‘high efficiency’ washer uses approximately three tablespoons of water and a commensurate amount of liquid detergent, also proudly labeled ‘high efficiency.’ This is supposed to clean a ‘normal’ load of about 7 to 10 inches in height.

Okay. After carefully following the instruction booklet, I loaded up the machine, added a thimbleful (maybe a slight exaggeration) of Tide and hit ‘start.’ The water began flowing…and then stopped, maybe thirty seconds later. At this point the machine made a clicking and groaning noise and began swishing our clothes around. I thought, hey, something must be wrong, there’s hardly any water in this thing. I hit the ‘pause’ button (my favorite control) and peeked into the tub. The clothes were higher than the water level! What the …?

I went back to the manual. The instructions did clearly state that this type of washer uses a fraction of the water used by standard (read ‘good’) washers. But seeing it for real was a shock. I hit ‘resume,’ went upstairs to do something else, thinking, well, since it doesen’t use much water, it’ll probably be done in no time.

No such luck. A ‘normal’ cycle takes about 25 minutes longer than the old machine did. A leading consumer magazine says this is the most common complaint about these washers. I suppose this is because there’s only a beer can’s worth of water in the tub and hence it takes a lot o’ agitatin’ to wash the clothes contained therein. I selected the ‘two-rinse’ option on the control panel, which, by the way, has about as many knobs and switches and blinking lights as the control panel on the International Space Station. I figured with the eye dropper’s worth of water the clothes would need two rinses.

Well, the thing seems to get the clothes clean, I guess. But it has a feature (read ‘drawback’) that I’ve never seen before. Once a month, says the manual, you’re supposed to throw in a cup of bleach and hit the ‘washer clean’ button. If you don’t do this, the implication is that at the very least the washer may develop odors or even (oh no!) malfunction. I have never had to do this type of thing with our ‘old timey’ (read ‘wonderful’) washers.

I’m seriously thinking of putting a want ad on our ‘Trading Post’ show for a good old standard washer in decent condition. Or maybe I could hire someone to wash our clothes in the Arkansas River. On second thought, scratch that idea. The Ark only has a thimbleful of water itself. And no rinse cycle.

Okay, let’s sort through your mail…

Re: the hall of fame question: Terry guess the Pro Football HOF in Canton, Ohio. Hmm, not quite. The question states that the HOF we’re asking for is in upstate New York, not too far from the Baseball HOF and the National Soccer HOF. This particular HOF has many inductees with colorful stage names. Hint hint.

Randall and Roger were both winners in the openable rear window question involving ‘50s-‘60s cars. Both Mercury and its ‘big brother’ Lincoln had retractable rear windows for that ‘flow-through’ ventilation. The option was finally dropped in 1968 when air conditioning became more popular.

Julie guessed ‘Anthony’s’ as the store we were thinking of in the Village Mall shopping center. Well, we already named Anthony’s in the question. We’re looking for at least one OTHER store that occupied that same spot. My wife got it right away. Hint: there is still one of these stores in the Hays Mall.

Okay, there are four questions still open: the HOF question above, the Anthony’s question, also two others: the one about the New York DJ who had co-writer credits on songs he didn’t write (big scandal back then) and also the name of the city in the upper Midwest that had a lot to do with the development of competitive skiing (hint) in the USA.

Well, let’s drop another two on you: what’s the name of the smaller bone in the lower leg?

What former Saturday Night Live star would occasionally do a bit where he played a really bad lounge singer?

Have yourself a magnificent (or at least adequate) week. We’ll visit again next week.

John