Obviously, if the events pertaining to the household small appliance in question did not involve some form of calamity or another, I wouldn’t waste my time writing about it (or yours, reading the same).
Therefore it is safe to assume something unusual happened in my life, and it involved—what else?—an air conditioner. Here we go:
It was the Sunday before Memorial Day, 2002, and I was still working swing shift as a technician at the hospital. I usually got up around one PM and left the house at 2:30 or so to head for work. The weather was beginning to warm up, and since my bedroom is the warmest room in the house (presumably because the water heater lives in my closet, and there is some kind of hot water pipe that runs at a diagonal from the water heater to elsewhere in my home, thus serving as a sort of a radiator. At least this is what I assume the situation to be, since, when I walk across the bedroom floor barefoot, there is a distinctly warm “path” about a 14” across and several feet long. It’s nice in the wintertime, but as soon as the weather warms up, I’m in trouble.
Thus it happened that particular Sunday afternoon, that I had taken my shower and found myself cooking in my robe. I decided to haul my little 5500 BTU Goldstar Air Conditioner out of the closet. With the benefit of hindsight, I would have chosen a different time to install this marvel of engineering, but it was hot and sticky and I was uncomfortable.
I take the air conditioner out of the bedroom window every year around the first part of November when the rains have begun. Since I live upstairs, there is no feasible way to put one of those tarp-like gizmos over the machine to keep the water out and the dry in, so I’ve really had no other choice than to take the unit down and put it away until the following year. I wish I didn’t have to do it because it’s a real pain in the ass trying to find a place to put something that has no business in a wardrobe, but nevertheless, that is just where it goes every autumn through late spring. Move over shoes, out of the way dresses: you’ve got company. It makes an already tight space into an impossibly cramped space (or lack of space, really).
The time had arrived to take the Goldstar out of storage. Whether or not I had to take action right then and there, when I was supposed to be getting ready for work, is another matter altogether, and one I didn’t care much about when it was 95 degrees in my bedroom.
I’ve gotten pretty good at putting the air conditioner up and taking it down—practice makes perfect. I have white fiberglass awning which fits on either side of the unit, and foam weather stripping to make a nice seal. This sounds professional enough. But it’s also where “professional” ends. In order to hold the thing in place, I close the window down tightly (there is a lip across the top of it so that it stays in place when the window is closed) and while pulling down on the top of the window with one hand, I take a cordless screwdriver and run a 2 ½” brass drywall-type screw directly through the window frame and into the sill (or whatever the side of the sill is called). This has always worked perfectly, and since it’s a metal window frame (gasp!) I just re-use the pilot hole from the year before.
Still in my robe, I did all of this, and plugged the air conditioner in and turned it on. Ahh! That felt better already!
However, as I examined the setup from a distance, it struck me that the window appeared to be closed somewhat askew, and I wasn’t sure why. I decided to remove the screws and straighten the window in its frame and re-screw the fasteners back into place. Easy enough.
The air conditioner, however, had different ideas. Or perhaps it was the air conditioner and the window frame conspiring to punish me for my repeated jury rigging. The window popped open about an inch or so, which was enough to permit the air conditioner to fall—from a second story window.
There went my plans.
“Shit!” I muttered as I ran outside and downstairs to survey what I expected to be the vaporized remains of my air conditioner. As a matter of fact, I expected to find it in something of a hole in the ground created by the impact. When I arrived at the spot, I was shocked to see nothing there. Huh? I looked up. To my disbelief, the air conditioner was hanging by its cord. I heard a humming sound and realized it was my downstairs neighbor’s window, vibrating from the air conditioner which now rested against the glass. For a moment I froze. What the hell? What to do? My brain kicked back into forward gear, and said, “turn the air conditioner off, dumbshit!” So I turned it off.
I was still in state of disbelief at the sight of this heavy object hanging by a thin cord—and that it had even continued to run, happily, even.
I dashed upstairs and realized that the front door had locked behind me when I went outside. I was wearing a robe, and that was it. My kids were both sound asleep (they keep terrible hours). I began banging at the front door, then ran downstairs and stood underneath Amanda’s window, shouting, “Let me in! Hurry! Help!”
The door finally opened, and Amanda, still half-asleep, looked at me as if I’d gone mad. I was standing on the porch, in my robe, panting. “come on! You’ve got to help me!”
“huh?” she asked groggily.
“Hurry, no time to explain, it’s the air conditioner, it fell out the window”, I shouted as we headed for my bedroom.
I have to admit, even though I was in a frantic state of mind, part of me detached itself from the rest of my quivering, stupid self, and beheld, with amazement, the sight of the window, which had slammed closed, on the cord, with just the plug on the inside of the frame, still attached to the power strip, pulled on its cord as tight as a piano string, plugged in to the wall outlet.
“We have to get this thing in!” I yelled.
“How?” Amanda asked.
“I don’t know….carefully!” I replied, my voice shaking. “okay, here is what I need you to do. I am going to hold the plug as tightly as I can, and I need you to open the window. As soon as it’s open, I need you to help me, I need you to grab the cord.”
…and that’s what we did.
Let me tell you right now, when you are trying to hold the better part of one hundred pounds of steel and machinery by a puny little plug, it may as well weigh a ton. Nevertheless, I held on, and Amanda grabbed that cord, and together, we began slowly hauling the air conditioner back up, hand over hand. It began to sway, and I said, “Stop! Wait! We can’t let it do that. If it sways any harder it’s going to go right through that window downstairs.” (I can’t say I like our neighbors, and with good reason, which I am sure could make a story for another time. However, I did NOT want my air conditioner in their house by means of a huge hole in their window.)
I need to remind the audience (assuming I have one) that both Amanda and I were wearing only robes, and mine was coming open. Amanda noticed this and commented. “Who gives a fuck?” I yelled. “No one’s looking, let’s get this fucker back inside!”
The air conditioner seemed to get heavier by the moment, and our arms were beginning to tremble. Amanda complained that she thought her ribs were bruising from leaning against the window sill. I felt like my neck (which had sent me to the hospital only one week before) was about to go into another cramp. Amanda was nearly crying. “I can’t do this anymore!” she wailed, and I snapped, “Bullshit! Hang ON.” She shot me a look that could have killed, but didn’t let go, and after what felt like an eternity, the air conditioner was now just under the window frame.
“Amanda, please listen. I need you to hang on to the cord with all your might, so I can get hold of this thing and haul it up”.
She groaned and I swore and we both probably gave any passing neighbors quite a show with our lack of apparel and the absurdity of our task—like something from LaVerne and Shirley or I Love Lucy.
Amanda was just about to give up and let go, when I finally gave one last heave, and the Goldstar was back inside. When we were finished, Amanda had grooves in her rib area from leaning on the window frame and I had abrasions on my arms and scratches from the corners of the machine as I grappled with it as it hung precariously below the window frame.
We made it.
I proceeded to finish the task of installing the air conditioner, this time while Amanda held the window down, and the rest went without a hitch. I turned the unit on, and it hummed as happily as if nothing had ever happened. My room eventually cooled off (even though I was suffering from heat exhaustion from the struggle alone).
In all, I was about twenty minutes late for work. Luckily it was a slow afternoon at the clinic. I had one hell of a fish tale to tell when I got there.
I have since thought of contacting Goldstar and complementing them on building such a durable piece of equipment. Amanda and I have laughed at the thought of our fiasco becoming a commercial and making a nice little chunk of money for our efforts on that muggy May afternoon.
Maybe someday I’ll make that call. I won’t even have to tell the story again; all I need to do is point them to this page.
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