Farmer H's FRIGside Manner Leaves A Little To Be Desired

Calling Dr. Bombay! Emergency, come right away! 

If only I was Samantha Stephens, and could summon Dr. Bombay to fix my problems! Even a Dr. Bombay fix might be better than a Farmer H fix. Especially since Farmer H's retirement.

The ailing patient is FRIG II. He has a malfunction of his ice dispenser. He won't cube. Only crush. We've had FRIG II forever. Well. Almost forever. At least we've had him since The Original Frig. I know his peccadilloes. Sometimes, a blob of cubes get hung up over the dispensing hole, and FRIG II chews them up and spits them into my bubba cup as crushed ice.

I don't want that! Crushed ice melts too fast! I can't be traipsing up and down 13 steps all willy-nilly, to get fresh ice. Anyhoo...in the past, both boys and I knew that all FRIG II needed was a thump. An upward thump, once opening his freezer door, on the bottom of his icehole. That popped the cube cluster loose, and let cubes in, and sometimes broke the cubes apart.

This time, all the icehole thumping in the world would not cure FRIG II of his crushing illness. I called Farmer H to the kitchen.

"I can't get any ice cubes. It crushes them every time, and won't stop."

"Did you put it on crush?"

"No...I think I know how an ice maker works. I've done this for years!"

Farmer H started back to the living room!

"Is that all you're going to do?"

"HM, I don't know what's wrong with it."

"So I'm supposed to live with only crushed ice for the rest of my life? I don't think so! You have to take it out! Come back here! Look. This spiral thingy turns when you push the lever, and moves the ice cubes forward so they fall out the hole. I chopped some frozen slabs out from under it. It's not that. The spiral thingy is turning just fine, moving ice forward. 

I pulled all the cubes out of this round wheel thingy. That's where it grinds, on that blade, when a cluster of them get stuck. So the clog should be out now. There's NOTHING in that round wheel thingy. But when the spiral moves the cubes into it, they get crushed. For no reason. It usually grinds up a cluster, then spits the cubes out again. THREE times I cleaned that round wheel thingy out, but it STILL is crushing the cubes."

"Huh." Farmer H opened the door. "That's the thing back there that turns it."

"Yeah...but it doesn't know when to grind. It just turns the spiral."

Farmer H closed the freezer door, and started pushing on the CUBE and CRUSH buttons. Which aren't really buttons, but squares kind of drawn in plastic, which you push on, and depress some button behind the plastic. They've never lit up. Since I hadn't messed with it, I knew it was still on CUBE, like it has been forever. Somehow, with the door open, Farmer H got those two non-buttons to light up when pushed.

"There. NOW it's on cube." He closed the door, and went back to the living room. I tried for some ice. GRIND GRIND GRIND.

"Come back! Something in there is making it crush! Even though it's on CUBE."

"It's on the wrong setting."

"You said it was on the RIGHT setting!"

Farmer H messed with it again. We heard a POP from the back of FRIG II's throat.

"There! That reset it to CUBE. See that little square in the back? On the other side from the thing that turns the spiral? That's got something to do with it."

"Then test it."

"I don't know what you want me to do, HM."

"Get a bowl and put it under the hole and push the lever! If it gives cubes, put them back in the ice bin. I've wasted two cups of ice already, trying to make it CUBE not CRUSH. How can you not know how to fix this?"

"Well, HM, you need a schematic to know how it works."

"I know more than YOU, and nobody flew ME around the world buying and servicing million-dollar machines!"

"Whatever."

"So I guess you'd just leave it like that? Forever? I'm not living out the rest of my life like that, with nothing working right."

Good thing FRIG II was working upon the test-cubing. Though still making an ominous grinding noise, which Farmer H said was trying to switch over to the crush setting. I'll deal with the noise, as long as I get my cubes.

Seriously! I was not impressed by the insouciant FRIGside manner of Farmer H. He did that for a living, you know. Was flown worldwide, to work on million-dollar machines. And now a little Frigidaire ice maker stumps him? I don't believe that for a minute!

I guess I need to remind Farmer H that he can't retire from taking care of the Mansion.