The Prairie Spy

Alan “Lindy” Linda

I learned to speak Appliance way back, right after the U.S. Army sent me back from Vietnam on an early release to attend college. I had three days to get from Quang Tri, Vietnam, to Iowa State University and get enrolled. I luckily found a place to live. It was a small part of an older couple’s basement, and it was pretty dreary, but, hey, it wasn’t Vietnam.

It was there in those first stressful days that I intercepted a plot by the refrigerator to poison me. (It turns out that three days to do what I just did just isn’t enough for the human mind. So.) Out of all this, I developed the ability to hear and speak Appliance. The furnace told me what the evil refrigerator was up to. I’ve spent most of my life since then either fixing various household furnaces and appliances, or teaching others how to do it. 

I was good at it. To most people, the squeaks, rattles, and work stoppages of appliances sounds like French, which some people learn, I understand. I learned Appliance.

There was a to-do down in the basement yesterday. Lady Kenmore the Dryer had somehow found a whistle and was blowing through it. It was an ear splitting din. General Electric the Washing Machine, being so close to her, sent me an emergency message, via The Appliance Hotline. You better get down here, he said.

I can ignore Lady Ken a little bit, but one ignores The General at some risk. So I went downstairs to find out what had gotten Lady Ken’s heating elements all in a twist.

Before I got there, Dave Lennox the Furnace stopped me. He has the unenviable placement between the stairs and the laundry room, so he always sees me first. Which is okay. He often, with his arms stretched throughout the house, knows more about what is going on than I do.

Okay, I asked him. Why is Lady K. killing my ears blowing on that whistle? I closed the laundry room door. I couldn’t hear myself think.

“Well,” Dave said, “she’s protesting ICE.” He went on: “It turns out that some of her inner component parts, like a couple of bearings and her motor, were made in Mexico.”

Uh, huh. So?

“She thinks ICE is going to bust into the house and arrest her as a nonresident alien, and send her back to where those parts came from.” The whistle squealed again. Dave shot a little extra hot air in my direction, trying to calm me before I came unglued.

And the whistle, I asked him? Where’d that come from?

Dave quit blowing air and started playing dead. So I told him never mind. He still has to be down there and get along with the rest of The Appliances.

I put in some ear plugs and eased into the laundry room, where Lady Kenmore had blown the whistle so hard that her exhaust hose had come loose and was whipping around the room. It was whacking me pretty good.

I showed her my fake Constable’s badge–yes, I was a township Constable for a very short time back in ‘73. (Not too prestigious. My main task was sweeping up the hall after monthly meetings, but I don’t mention that. And I had to buy my own badge.) I waved the badge at her. She stopped swatting me with her exhaust vent hose.

I told Lady K. that my authority was way more superior to ICE’s authority, and she didn’t have to worry.

And would she quit blowing that damned plastic whistle, please.

She did. But she was still a little riled up. So I ended up deputizing her and putting her in charge of protecting all the other appliances–most of which had foreign parts in them, too.

She’s down there now, trying to organize a parade. Sigh.