Illustration by Catherine Chan
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Way back in the year 2000, none of us had iPhones, Britney Spears was burning up the pop charts with Oops!… I Did It Again and I bought my current, reliable, although now failing, refrigerator.
By “failing” I refer to episodic wild variations in temperature, one of which resulted in the catastrophic spoiling of my family’s ultracritical emergency supply of frozen breaded haddock fillets. As an aesthetic concern, and to my mind, not really a concern at all, the interior is by now a patchwork of duct tape. The long broken original egg tray has been refashioned with scraps of plywood I found under a tarpaulin at the back of my garage.
To my children, ever critical of my frugality when it comes to major appliance expenditures, I pointed out that my fridge was doing very well compared with my friend Naomi’s relic, which sports one of her husband’s discarded leather belts replacing a handle that fell off before I met her 20 years ago. Refrigerator cognoscenti will be correct to point out that for the past decade, most models no longer even have recognizable handles.
But that’s all curdled milk under the bridge, and it only took one more fresh-from-the-market cilantro bunch to be reduced overnight to a jammy gloop in my non-crisping crisper to send me in search of a new model.
Sometimes you find joy in the strangest places, like the grocery checkout line
But where to look? My soon-to-be-late fridge came from one of the upper floors of a downtown department store, a setback, as department stores no longer seem to sell major appliances, and my department store has long ago closed its doors and gone the way of the wringer washer. My aging, though fundamentally functioning, washer and dryer came from a lovely mom-and-pop establishment, but neither mom nor pop answer the phone any more when I call them, and I suspect that their location has been repurposed as a cannabis dispensary.
Not yet knowing where to go was perhaps a blessing because as my wife correctly pointed out, we had not yet “done our homework.” Just for the record, unlike my wife, I hate homework.
This stage entailed badgering almost everyone we’ve ever known who might have bought a new refrigerator since the dawn of the current millennium. “Do those smudgeless, stainless steel doors really not smudge?” “You replaced your compressor twice in three years?” and of course that perennial question: “Should we get the extended warranty?”
Heading reluctantly down the rabbit hole of special features, we encountered a model boasting “craft ice,” meaning ice in customized shapes, possibly Disney characters. One uber deluxe model, defying at least one law of thermodynamics, promises “slow melting ice.” Yet another high-end unit features an illuminated window built into the door giving your kitchen a cool 7-Eleven vibe.
Less exciting, and to my mind completely unnecessary, are the “silence” and “vibration free” selling points that many models advertise. With no immediate plans of relocating to a Tibetan monastery, I welcome some of the gentle humming, buzzing and even the occasional “ka-chunk” that I associate with a robustly functioning major appliance.
Our cottage chainsaw crew has one leader (and I’m in no hurry for my turn)
Homework done, mostly by my wife, off we went on a tour of soulless big-box stores in equally soulless concrete centres to kick the tires, so to speak, of the half-dozen units that had made our short list.
With model numbers long enough to be mistaken for the presidential nuclear codes and each fridge looking much the same as all the other fridges, we trudged up and down the aisles, at last settling on model PDS22MBSAWW of a not overly maligned mid-priced brand. But it was not to be. According to our measurements, this new beast was two inches too wide to fit into the kitchen and could only be accommodated by knocking out what an architect acquaintance advised “probably wasn’t, but maybe was” the main interior supporting wall of the entire house.
Our house is still standing and the old fridge continues to hum, buzz and issue the occasional “ka-chunk,” albeit louder and more frequently than before.
But we need a new fridge. It’s time for me to embrace some bells and whistles. Custom slow-melting ice cubes might be “fun” after all.
However, remembering that I’m the guy with the plywood egg tray, there are places I will not go. I’m thinking of an astounding and somewhat creepily alarming model replete with WiFi connectivity and an interior surveillance camera. Maybe I’m paranoid but solely on the basis of household confidentiality concerns, I’ll pass on that one. Let Beijing know how I vote and how much money I have in my bank account, but that mouldy eggplant at the back of my fridge is my business and my business only.
We’ll go looking again this week.
Farley Helfant lives in Toronto.
