Death In The Kitchen

Rivlets of what look to be stale coffee spill down the refrigerator door, long ago transformed into rust. Bumpy layers of paint slopped on to cover the mess have rusted through too, if that's possible. The once white refrigerator I inherited with the house bravely soldiers on, refusing to be stood out behind the barn with a cigarette in its mouth and shot.

The freezer door up top squeaks when I open it. The backdraft odor is a stale pent-up Ice Age—pork chops, popsicles, and lasagna from the ancient summer of 1983. Glacial ice sheets have expanded another quarter-inch toward the yellow garden corn. If I was wee small and lived in there I'd be concerned. I pitch a softball sized clump of bagged green peas into the ice hole. It hits the rear of the freezer with a satisfying bullseye thump and I slam the door shut.

"Clunk, clunk, clunk." The freezer has learned a word. Or a cough. The broken sound enthusiastically turns into a death rattle and, because I'm so empathetic, I feel a phantam pain in my wallet. I know more about conjoined Siamese twins than about refrigerators but I'm pretty sure the demise of the freezer part means the refrigerator part couldn't, shouldn't, carry on.

Two days later the rusty-trusty carcass is hauled away to that Great Kitchen in the sky. Looking at the cold stainless steel box that replaces it, I allow myself one sigh for the passing of an era. But really, my earthly kitchen was never better.

Cool refrigerator illustration from U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.