the editor talks with you

Among my many talents you’ve undoubtedly never heard about is that I am an accomplished, veteran dish washer.

I try to be modest about it. I learned this particular skill as a child born into a family that had no mechanical dish washer.

They may not have been invented back then or my patents were practical and recognized their talented child was cheaper.

I honed these skills in US Army mess halls while in training at Fort Jackson.

I was relieved to find that as an infantry grunt in Korea I no longer had to wash pots, pans and trays with encrusted food.

The closest to a kitchen I came was on the troop ship that took us a week to cross the Pacific. I was tapped to help serve meals to fellow soldiers, some so sea sick they didn’t want to eat anyway. I made it across the Pacific without feeling queasy.

In the field in Korea, you dunked your mess kit into a barrel of hot, soapy water and then into a rinse bath and that was it.

All this came to mind as I was doing the dishes after dinner the other evening.

We are fortunate that mechanical dish washers have since been invented and we are proud owners – except that this dish washer, not me, had begun to leak.

The mistress of our abode decided it was time for a new one. We have had 3 dish washers, not counting me, in the last 34 years. The 1st was probably at least 5 years old when we acquired it. It came with the house we bought in 1985.

That is a few centuries to a wandering journalist who has rarely stayed in one place more than a couple of years.

When the gentlemen from the appliance store arrived with our new washer, what was the 1st thing they found?

Our new washer would not work the same way the old one did. The old washer was hooked up to wiring that provided the current. The new washer came with a male plug needing a female electrical outlet to make sweet music together.

If you have ever been without a dish washer, you will recognize the swish of water in the machines is as lovely as Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.

Our long-beached journalist came to the rescue. I’ve been doing the dishes until the mistress of our happy home convinced an electrician to come and end our misery.

He showed up after church the other Sunday and brought his main helpers, his sons, with him. He checked out the connection, decided the quickest and least expensive way to solve our problem was to direct wire the washer to the power source and forget the male and female sonata.

Now we are back in power washing mode – sans wandering journalist – and the lady of our house is smiling.

I did a little math. The dish washer makers are head and shoulders above the car makers in this country. In the last 34 years we have owned 3 vans, 1 truck and I lost count of the sedans we owned, None of them have lasted like those 3 dish washers.

My only regret is that my family has found me out. I was perfectly content being considered a clueless cretin when it came to household chores. Now they know my few skills include dish washing. They may want me to start cooking and vacuuming next.

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