Among the real joys of this NG are the links that JOAT takes the time to post. I don't know where he comes up with this stuff, but it's FASCINATING.
One of his recent links described a Maytag Fruit Juice extractor. Whilst I admired the ingenuity that went into its construction, what dazzled me most was that the builder did it WITH HIS WIFE'S PERMISSION.
Where does a guy find a wife like that? As near as I can figure, the author must be a newlywed. It has been my experience that as a wife gains tenure, she becomes increasingly intractable. By the time anniversaries hit around
20, she don't herd worth a hoot.This time-dependent, progressive inflexibility manifests itsef most noticeably in the area of kitchen utensils and home appliances. The term "multi-use" doesn't mean the same thing to her as it does to us.
I had a dandy idea for scaling perch and sunfish. It involved lining the clothes washer with expanded mesh and disconnecting the hot water feed. Probably wouldda worked. We'll never know.
Similarly, there is a way of drying surplus shrimp. Boil 'em for about three minutes, spread on a horizontal screen door in the sun for several days until the shells become brittle, then toss them in a loose cloth bag into a clothes drier for 20 minutes. The shells turn into powder and the dried meat is left for gumbo down the road. Friends of mine do this all the time using the community clothes drier in the laundry room of their trailer park.
As near as I can figure, my bride must have some sort of built-in early warning radar. She hit our laundry room at a dead run before the drier had made three revolutions. Twenty pounds of 60-count bay shrimp went into the trash.
The list is endless. HER hair dryer is not to be used to fan the coals in the barbecue. A dingus I was building with a car battery, duct tape and a butter knife would not involve anything that had "Reed and Barton" printed on it.
Mind you, I'm not bitching or nothing. After thirty-some years, at least one of us is fully trained . . . . . however . . . . . ever so once in a while I start wondering what real estate prices are like in Stepford.