By Jim Hagarty
My wife has this strange way of doing business. Rather than hopping in the car and rushing off to a store to see if they have something she needs, she phones first. Sometimes, she even phones two or three stores and does some price comparisons.
It’s embarrassing.
Worse, it doesn’t make any sense. The proper way is to drive to Store A and wander up and down the aisles, hoping to find the item yourself. When a staff member approaches you to see if you need help, which you obviously do, you reply, “No thanks. Just lookin’.” The minutes tick by and finally, there it is. Eureka! It’s even on sale, but it nags at you. Is it on for less at any of the other stores? Hop in the car and drive around to see.
Store B has it, but it costs more and Store C doesn’t have it, but could order it. All this extra investigating has taken an hour, because you get distracted looking at a lot of stuff you don’t need. During that time, the two items Store A had in stock are now gone, having been on sale. Back you go to Store B to buy what you could have had for a few dollars less an hour before. Gas bills, aggravation have added to the cost.
It doesn’t help to go home to see your wife sitting on the porch with a tea, reading a novel. She even buys stuff over the phone. And the Internet. Bizarre.
Ten years ago, one of the two springs holding up the garage door on our then 40-year-old house broke. Went off like a rocket when it did. Had I been in the garage at the time, l might be telegraphing this column to you from Heaven. The spring was rusty and 40 years old (as I was getting to be myself, at the time).
It was obvious to me that that particular spring, which could obviously not be fixed, was not being manufactured any more. So, for the past 10 years I have had to use Herculean strength to open the door, held up all that time by only one spring. When it closed, it did so with an ominous, blood-curdling bang.
This summer, we were visiting relatives when l watched their 11-year-old son open their old garage door with one hand. “Gee, I wish we could do that,” I exclaimed, and explained my problem to his father, a department store manager.
“Oh, you can still buy those springs,” he said, and told me where to get them. Had he told me where I could pitch a pick axe and strike a motherlode of gold, I could not have been more overcome.
So, I went to the store, and there they were. I bought two of them. New, nicely painted. Fantastic. I rushed them home and ran to the garage to install both of them, reasoning that if the first one blew apart 10 years ago, the second one might go at any moment and crack me in the bean.
Alas, when I went to replace the one that had already burst, it was to find that a small piece onto which the spring is to be fastened, was also gone. Back to the store. I tried to explain what I needed to the three employees who wanted so badly to help but it was like I was asking directions on a street corner in Madrid. I got desperate. Like one of those distraught pet owners searching far and wide for Fluffy, I took a picture of the part I was missing and began circulating it to garage door stores, knowing full well that I could not get lucky twice. They might still make springs for my now-50-year-old door, but I just knew you couldn’t still get the little gizmo I needed.
At my second stop, the store owner took one look at my picture of Fluffy, er, the gizmo, and said, “Hang on.” He went back in his shop and I heard a lot of banging. Soon, he reappeared with the part. My jaw dropped. “How much?” I asked him, resisting the urge to hug him tightly. “Your lucky day,” he said. “Just take it.”
Three thousand, 600 and 50 days after my garage door broke, I was back in business. Saturday, I spent most of the afternoon opening and closing the door. With one finger. Others were off whooping it up at a rock concert (which I could easily hear in my garage). I was playing with my door. And having a better time than they were.
The only cloud is knowing that the same day the spring broke in 1996, my wife would have phoned around, found the springs, phoned around and found the gizmo, and had it all up and going the next day. And sat on the porch to read her novel.
However, she would never have known the joy only 10 years of waiting can deliver.
I feel sorry for her.
