shingo2008

 Published August 5, 2008

Strike up the bagpipes and play a somber funeral march. My washerhas died.

  And it did so in a fairly spectacular fashion Sunday.

  For a while now, we have been on a vigil of sorts, watching,listening and waiting for the washer to quit. My repairman told usin the early spring it would cost less to purchase a new machinerather than to fix what we have.

  So we opted to wait, and hoped it would give out later rather thansooner.

  While washing a load of bath towels a new, terrible screechingnoise, emanating from the machine during the spin cycle, signaledthe beginning of the end.

  Maybe that should have been enough to signal to stop the load,gather everything up and head to the nearest Laundromat, but no.

  I decided to redistribute the load.

  Surely the noise was caused by something caught in the centeragitator. Moving the towels around and taking out one or two wouldhelp, or so I thought.

  Nope.

  My next tip something was horribly wrong should have been the factthe spin cycle finished, but nothing was plastered to the sides ofthe washtub. All those towels were in a heap in the bottom. Notgood.

  Penetrating my haze of denial was the stench of melted, hot rubber.Upon opening my laundry area doors, I was greeted with a steamy,smoky, tremendous smell. It was similar to what I am sure it wouldsmell like if Tony Stewart were doing victory burnouts at thefinish line at the Indianapolis Speedway.

  Staring at the cooking washer, I debated what to do next. In theend, I decided to load everything up and find a Laundromat.

  Schlepping a ton of sopping wet and smelly towels across town wasdefinitely not on my list of things to do Sunday, but I persevered.

  At the Laundromat, a wonderful young Hispanic man surprised me bycarrying in the second basket of wet clothes into the Laundromat.

  In broken English, he asked if I wanted the basket put near adryer, not understanding (Im not sure how) that everything in thebasket stunk like a skunk.

  His little girl played peek-a-boo with me while we waited for theload to finish. The time flew by and he helped me take the basketsof clean clothes to my van. He refused to take a tip, and again inbroken English, said he did his great deed for the day.

  Somehow that one act of kindness made the whole experience lessannoying and less tedious.

  Thankfully I wont have to repeat the experience anytime soon. Twovery nice delivery men are here now delivering a new machine.

  [Elizabeth Summers is a staff writer for The Sand MountainReporter. Her e-mail address iseducation(at)sandmountainreporter.com.]