I wish I had a picture of the way I jerry-rigged this problem because some people might not believe what I’m about to tell you. But here goes anyway:
One of our kitchen cabinets fell off the wall one night. I was standing right there so I caught it on the way down and pushed it back and yelled for my wife, Donna, to hand me an empty kerosene can.
[I was heating the house with kerosene back then and I always had several five-gallon cans sitting around, some full, some empty. Kerosene smelled bad and smoked up the ceilings sometimes but it was a lot cheaper than heating with electricity.]
Donna got me a kerosene can but it wasn’t tall enough so I asked her to hand me three or four soup cans. I wedged them between the top of kerosene can and the bottom on the cabinet and, presto, good as new.
I was really busy at work –I was a newspaper reporter– and didn’t have time to nail the cabinet back to the wall, or screw it, or whatever it was I needed to do. So I ended up leaving that empty kerosene can on top of Donna’s kitchen counter for a pretty good while.
How long?
I don’t know exactly. Who remembers stuff like that?
But it’s not like I didn’t do anything. When the original soup cans started to rust and look bad I replaced them with new cans.
That, unfortunately, is a true story.
Postscript: Eventually we remodeled our kitchen. Now if I could just find time to fix the storm door.
Coming Friday: Three Strikes Is All You Get
Made me laugh.