Farm Project #16 Hunting For the Dryer Part

 Farm Project #16: Hunting For the Dryer Part

It turned out to be a red letter day in this handy man's life!  And I met my doppelganger!

First I took the chance of going in to WESCO in Sparta.  They were very helpful and even identified a part number for me, although they didn't have it in stock but could order it.  My quest is to find the part TODAY and put it in tomorrow!

So I drove to La Crosse.  The first stop my navigator took me to was a big appliance store with a good service shop, and I probably would have been able to get the part there if the service person hadn't left at noon and wouldn't be back until Monday.

The second place was on the edge of La Crosse-Onalaska and identified the part but did not have it.  

I searched my navigator and found one more to try.  It took me down into the city, to the south end of town, Mormon Coulee Road and, to my amazement, right into the trailer park that my great aunt Evelyn used to live in many, many years ago when I was just a high school and college kid here. I drove around in circles to no avail and was about to give up the quest when I decided to stop at an old house with an appliance sitting on the porch.  Maybe.  How many people have an old stove sitting on the porch?

A beater truck drove up in a cloud of dusty and my doppelganger soul brother jumped out and asked me what I wanted.  I mentioned the little drive pulley and he said, "I work out of the garage.  Come on in."

Then he led me into a medium sized garage which was absolutely stuffed with junk from corner to corner.  I was overwhelmed!  There were refrigerators, stoves, washers, dryers, air conditioners, all in various stages of cannibalization.  The floor was covered with wires, tubes, hoses, pieces of integrated circuit chips, and other sundry junk.

To my amazement, there was a small woman in there, behind a bank of junk, talking on the phone.  

Todd, the technician, disappeared into a far corner and was rooting around under an old dryer.  Then he squeezed by me to go and find a wrench.  I had to step up onto a piece of old rolled up carpet to give him room.

Then he asked the small woman, who was now off the phone, "where are all those drive motors we had?"

She began looking around and soon they located four, three of which were from washing machines.  He bent down in back of a chassis and started working.  Soon he had the little pulley off, tried my broken one on the threads of the spline and verified that it fit.

Then he tried to just give it to me!

I insisted on paying him something and gave him ten dollars.  Then I told him that if I were younger I would ask him for a job, since the place was identical to the way my mind is constructed.  Todd opined that it was a blueprint for how his mind was constructed and told me to return in my next hour of need.