Snow on the Roof

We will all probably get there someday - some gracefully, most accepting life's change, and a few kicking and screaming in an all out effort to stop the progression.


Upon returning home from work yesterday, I discovered Bill, the refrigeration guy, perched precariously on the pitched roof of Lynda Allen's outbuilding and a mostly disassembled condenser of the ice machine. (The unit is like a car's radiator.) The big metal fan blade was off to one side, the fan motor was balanced on one edge of the metal box, and Bill was using his electric drill to remove more metal screws from the guts of the beast. It was a very warm evening. He went up and down the ladder so often that his client, with a streak of compassion as wide and deep as the nearby San Joaquin River, urged him to slow down and take it easy and plied him with cold beverege and promised him something with holladaise sauce for dinner.


C'mon! The guy has pure white hair, an ancient ticker, and is doing vertical ladder laps just so Medusa can have a few hundred pounds of ice every day! And she wants to kill him with her cooking. It's probably Theresa's cooking, though; Lynda is merely the genius businesswoman and truck driver.


Since I can no longer glue my eye - or a camera - to the proverbial knothole in the fence to watch the ground level action, I listened and imagined {. . ."Give me a T! Give me an L! Give me a C! YeeaaaaAA, BILL!" . . .} "Do you want us to turn the power off?", "Do you want us to turn the power on?", "Is there anything we can do for you, Bill?", "Slow down, take it easy." The harpies circled and crooned continuously. They must really, REALLY want that "free" ice. The only problem is it is not "free" - they make their neighbor pay dearly for it.


Despite the yammering and yapping down below, for Bill took things apart and put them back together again for at least an hour-and-a-half. The frequent trips up and down were mainly to punch the machine's ON button and listen for a few moments until the startup sequence failed. From the time I started counting, at least ___ attempts were made to wake the dragon. Various pieces were taken off and replaced, meters were employed then put away, more than a few grunts and Harumphs were articulated and, of course, a lot of heavy breathing from the rapid elevation gains on the ladder. For a while it appeared he may have been on to the problem, but other times he lost a few hairs from scratching his snowy white head while appearing to think.


After 7:30, the dragon ladies' chorus changed to "Go home, Bill," and "Enjoy your holladaise sauce."