600Q Here, 600Q There, Pretty Soon it’s Real Money

Yesterday the Wife called while I was out drinking on an errand and said, “The dryer is making a terrible sound, and I think the neighbors would complain, so I turned it off.”  She stopped talking and there was that long silence that indicated she was expecting some response from me other than, “Ok.”

A little insight here:  we live in a small, quiet gated community just outside of town.  We didn’t really intend on being in a gated community, it just happened to be the best deal that was available when we needed to find a place.  It’s a safe community, extremely private, and everyone sticks to themselves.  We’d been here a month before meeting one neighbor, and two months before meeting the other, at which time I introduced myself to the very genteel, attractive, and well cared-for woman, whom I’ll call ‘Isabel’, and when I apologized if my children had ever caused any trouble (the occasional soccer ball over the wall, the attempted lynchings and accompanying screams, naked boys chasing one another with plastic guns, etc.), she said, “Oh, of course not, but your dryer sometimes is an irritation”.

Isabel was referring to the fact that the tiny laundry room/storage room/pantry/pilar has space for only the washer or the dryer, but not both.  So, like the worst stereotype you can imagine of white trash from south Alabama, we have our dryer on the patio, where sometimes it apparently rattles enough to annoy our kind neighbor.

What can you say in that situation?  I thought about taking her some roses, but a quick look from the wife nixed that.  So, I sent the kids over to do some manual labor, which pleased her to no end.  Isabel responded by buying them two large pizzas, which were consumed in under 3 minutes.  This obligated me to respond in kind, so I volunteered the Wife to make some of her cheesecake (successfully modified based on locally available ingredients and better than what you can buy anywhere in Antigua), and I had one of the boys walk it over.  Isabel seemed pleased, as my son said, “She smiled really big, took the plate quickly, and closed the door”.  Hopefully the peace offering worked.

So back to the phone call from the Wife.  I told her I would call the repair guy, who is the same guy we bought our washing machine from.  He’s a rare guy; young, entrepreneurial, responsive, dependable, and trustworthy. ( Too bad he doesn’t drive a shuttle.)  He seems competent too, and that’s a welcome change.  So I call him, and between my broken Spanish and his, well, Spanish, we agree that he’ll come over the following day to take a look at it.

When I got home I thought I might check it myself, just to see if it really was that bad.  After all, it wouldn’t surprise me to find that a kid had built some sort of contraption involving a fork, screwdriver, nails, shards of glass, pieces of concertina wire and broken up cobblestones behind the washer (yes, true story, but you’ll have to wait for that one), which caused all the commotion.  Well, sure enough, I turned the dial (just once, mind you), pressed the go button, and the damn thing nearly took off like a Chicken Bus trying to squeeze another roundtrip run to Guate.

If you remember the scene from Mr. Mom where Alex Keaton has to deal with the possessed washer, well, that gives you a pretty good idea.  I managed to turn it off before greater Antigua experienced a Chernobyl-like event, shook my head and wondered how much it would cost.

The next day, right after GuateLunch (3pm), the mechanic arrived with a sidekick, completely disassembled the machined and then pronounced it to have suffered the equivalent of a propeller on a airplane coming lose and ripping the wing to shreds.  A metal bracket that held the motor to the frame had torn from the frame, allowing the motor to spin freely within the frame, throwing shrapnel around at high velocity, shredding anything else that wasn’t metal.  My 5 year old peered in, giggled,  and then happily asked, “Is it dead, Daddy?”

The mechanic and sidekick chuckled and uttered something under their breath about “Es muerto, hehe.”  As it turns out, all was not lost.  After a long and detailed explanation, followed by my ritual response, “Si, si, pero, quanto questa?”, the Mechanic replies, “Ah, you know, seiscientos quetzales, mas o manos“.

If you’re a long-time reader of the blog, you know there is a special place in my heart for the ol’ 600Q.  There was the aborted attempt to install screens on the windows and more recently, the surprise 600Q after having two shelves installed.

Of course, if you’re foolish enough to run the dryer enough to drive your typical monthly electric bill to over 2300Q, what’s 600Q just to maintain your average?  Naturally, Mechanic needed the money upfront, you know, to cover parts, labor and transportation.  I half-heartedly asked when he would have it fixed.  After all, my ‘huge’ garden is about the size of my garage back in the states, and for some reason just isn’t as enjoyable when you have little-boy underwear, faded skidmarks and all, hanging from wall to wall.

Mechanic replied it would be later this afternoon, or at latest, tomorrow.  I smiled and said, “Muy bien, hasta manana.”

The next day, Mechanic arrived with two sidekicks.  Within minutes there were dozens of parts scattered around the patio.  Small children soon encircled the Mechanics, watching intently.  One was wearing nothing but a diaper, another dressed in blue jeans, a ripped up t-shirt, a bandana on his head and a huge stick in his hand (resembling something out of Shaka Zulu), and yet another wearing a wearing a nice polo shirt, dark dress socks and white tennis shoes (on the right feet, surprisingly), but no shorts or underwear.  If the Mechanic thought anything of it, he didn’t give any indication.

An hour later Mechanic and friends were gone.  There was no goodbye, no explanation, no request for additional money.  In a normal world, you might pick up the phone, call Mechanic and ask, “Que pasa?”.  Here, you just shrug your shoulders and move on.

A few hours later they returned.  45 minutes later I heard a barely audible hum coming from the patio.  It stopped and started again, and then I heard Mechanic call my name.  Sure enough, the dryer was running along very quietly, no doubt imperceptible to Senora Isabel.  The crew had already cleaned up and the two sidekicks were outside the gate climbing on Mechanic’s motorcycle (yes folks, two guys in addition to Mechanic).

Mechanic shook my hand, told me he guaranteed the work for six months, thanked me kindly, said goodbye to the assembled circus freaks children and left.  I glanced at the dryer, humming along quietly, and thought for a moment about having a extra-large dryer completely rebuilt on-location for 600Q ($75), including parts and labor.  Pretty incredible.