“It’s an ill wind that blows no good”
A few weeks ago I noticed a whirring sound coming from my washing machine and anxiously realized that ‘old Bessie’ may have seen her last days.
I feverishly ran down to my local PC Richard’s and asked one of their appliance salesmen if they thought I should get the machine repaired or just buy a new one. I already knew what the answer would be.
Repairs are what we call old school.
Nowadays, if it’s broken, get a new one. So I selected what I thought was a nice new model and scheduled to have it delivered by week’s end.
It all seemed to go so well. The guys came more or less on time and voila, I was the proud owner of a new state-of-the-art Whirlpool.
I happily dumped my dirty laundry in and listened to the expensive sounds coming from deep within this modern marvel. I was certain that my clothes were getting cleaner than ever.
All went well for a month or so but I noticed that the cycle was taking longer and longer to finish until finally the whole thing just stopped, still filled with dirty water.
What to do, what to do?
I rummaged through my old receipts and once again feverishly ran down to PC Richard’s to find out what had gone so wrong. I was told not to worry. They would send a repair man to look into it right away.
A few days later he arrived and determined that it is most certainly not the fault of the new Whirlpool but instead it must be some faulty drainage pipe of mine. I was instructed to call up a licensed plumber and have the drain blown out.
So once again I feverishly searched out a local plumber as it began to dawn on me that this was developing into a mounting financial issue.
I angrily cursed my bad luck and my need for clean clothes. My mother had always told me I was too compulsive about cleanliness but I argued back that her ways were slovenly and not to criticize me so much.
At any rate, I scheduled a time for the plumber to come and braced myself for the fees that I was about to incur. As a wizened and well-educated psychoanalyst, I knew for sure that the plumber’s hourly rate would be far greater than mine.
Well he showed up within the allotted time, give or take a few hours and low and behold the drainage pipe was blown out and I only had to pay $220. I was delighted and greatly relieved, that is until he told me that the drainage pipe was small and may not be suitable to handle my new Whirlpool and that if the blow out failed I was looking out a larger problem which would entail digging up my flooring and routing a new and wider drain pipe.
I postponed using the washing machine for as long as humanly possible but when the fateful moment came once again the machine failed to drain and now came to biggest and the baddest and the saddest moment of all. It was time for the dreaded ‘estimate.’
You know you’re in real big trouble when the plumber stutters and stammers and chokes before he gives you the ‘estimated’ cost of the job.
He had to consult someone on the phone as he stood in my kitchen and then said $4,500.
I must have looked shocked and disoriented because he then said “No, I meant to say $2,500.” This may have been a clever tactic on his part because now I was overjoyed to be paying only $2,500 for a new drain pipe.
This process would take a week or more so I was faced with finding a laundromat in town. As I was walking down Hillside Avenue I noticed a laundromat next to Minuteman Press with a small ‘letter to the editor’ scotch taped in the window.
The letter was written by Gerry Schneiderman, a Great Neck resident and Great Neck Plaza trustee, describing how he lost $500 and how the laundromat owner Kay had found the money in his laundry and returned it to him.
He added that Kay had refused to take a reward.
After reading this I walked into the H & Z Laundromat and relaxed for the first time in a month. True I was shell-shocked following my Washing Machine Saga but felt that I had arrived at a safe and an honest haven.
This is how I got to know Jenn and Kay He the new owners of the H & Z Laundromat at 132 Hillside Ave. in Williston Park.
They had owned the laundromat in Great Neck but had recently sold it and resettled here in Williston Park. This is Great Neck’s loss and our gain.
When things were going poorly for me as a child my father would always say to me “Tommy, it’s an ill wind that blows no good.”
This is an old Scottish saying which means that no matter how bad a situation is, there will also be some good that results from this.
And this was never truer than right now as I waded through my Washing Machine Saga. How else would I have ever met such nice decent people like Jenn and Kay He.
Welcome to Williston Park. It’s always good to know that there are still a few honest people left in the world.
