Just so you feel better…
My father considers himself a pillar of responsibility. While I won’t say that nothing could be further from the truth, I will say that it’s far enough from the Truth that no one wants to call him on it, for fear of bankrupting the US telecom industry with the unpaid long distance charge.
Judge for yourself:
About 15 years ago, he got a new refrigerator. Despite my best and loudest efforts to convince him, his sense of frugality wouldn’t allow him to have the old one hauled away. No sirree, It stil worked, and had cost a heap big pile of animals skins when he bought it. He had the deliveryman move it to the basement, intending to sell it.
His track record on such things (i.e. anything that doesn’t have a deadline as dire and unarguable as a guillotine) is pitiable. Heck, his track record on things with dire and guillotine-like deadlines isn’t enviable.
You think you know where I’m going with this don’t you? Yes, he didn’t empty it first–but if you think the story ends there, you don’t know my dad! Or my mom, who is so much worse that my dad’s delusions of responsibility seem true, compared to her.
You see, about seven years ago, Pops had to replace the “new” refrigerator–and this delivery man wasn’t as accomodating as the last: he refused to cart the “new” old fridge downstairs. He only grudgingly moved it to the garage, after a bribe -er- ‘extra fee’.
The garage was stuffed full of similar “treasures”. There was no accessible plug.
I can’t testify as to how much time passed before the day I needed to move the fridge to cut some plywood panels for him. I believe it was several years. You just don’t question things that are in othr people’s garages. Your favorite aunt could have a body in her deep-freeze and you’d never think to look.
You know all those jokes about civilizations evolving inside refrigerators? Well, this one had gotten as far as a new ecosystem. I would have thought the inside would have been a completely dry horror by then – a mummified tomb, but oh no! Liquid spilled out – assuming that it wasn’t something gelatinous and ameboid crawling out. (I’m only half joking. I can’t see how he could have cleaned that mess up in the clutter of that garage, but when (years later) we hired workers to empty his garage, the floor was pristine.
It wasn’t just the stench (which echoed in alien octaves beyond the range of the human nose). The interior was rippling with slimy bacterial colonies washing up against rocks of mold colonies, and writhing with many species of maggot-like creatures that apparently feasted on the mold, and died to feed the bacteria.
Now, at this point, I expect a certain skepticism. I, myself, can’t imagine how life could have survived successive cycles in that dark enclosed space. It just so happens that I’d scavenged some buldings at the old Boston City Hospital on the eve of their demolition ca. 1993, and by comparison, those abandoned lab and staff refrigerators were positive delights: after a succession of molds, everything dried to a sort of inert tidiness.
I can only guess that rodents may have gnawed their way into dad’s fridge. Perhaps I was seeing the terminal stages of a fairly recent recolonization by insects and the things that eat them (At least I hope that fuzzy gelatinous mass with distinct signs of an endoskeleton was something that crawled in. the alternatives are far more disturbing). Such a hole may have allowed periodic wafts of oxygen in, fueling civil wars of aerobes vs. anerobes.
Well, whatever the natural history of that microcosm, having broken the seal, I had to get it out of his house. Fortunately there were straps and a hand-truck in the garage, so I weas able to quickly hauled it into the backyard. I dumped it on its back, and left the door open to the purifying effects of rain, sun, and garden hoses. Yes, I know I should have removed the door, but it was dark by6 then, and I had pressing matters at my own home, so I let my father’s promise to remove it himself satisfy me, and I hopped in my car. Besides, At that moment, I couldn’t imagine any mammal, much less an inquisitive neighbor-kid, wanting to climb inside that thing.
When I returned the next week, I could smell it through my car window a good quarter mile away. I’m sure the neighbors (with whom he has hardly spoken in the two decades he’s lived there) were wondering what was gong on, but the smell was peculiarly hard to localize. It swirled in malevolent eddies that were almost palpable. One punched me in the nose as I rang his doorbell. It was completely disconcerting to be so assaulted, without seeing so much as a fog or ectoplasm.
And of course, despite dad’s promises, the door was still firmly mounted on the fridge. That didn’t shock me – I’d realized it was inevitable, once I was home breathing air again. What shocked me was that the door was closed. This wasn’t even direct stink.
Despite weeks of sunlight, hosings, bleachings and creative flushings of the internal vents, it still stank. Finally the increasingly freezing late autumn weather made further cleaning efforts impractical.
Then Dad tried to sell it.
He failed, thank heavens–just imagine the liability! In the end, the town garbage men wouldn’t take it, and he had to hire someone to haul it to the dump. Or <shudder> at least that’s what he told me he did with it. Given what eventually happened to the older refrigerator… <shudder>…
