Sometimes it feels like I’m in a sitcom. Or on a Candid
Camera joke-type show. I find myself in a moment so ridiculous that I think,
“Surely this cannot be real.” I expect to hear the laugh-track. I look around
for the cameras. One of these moments happened over the weekend, on the porch
of my house.
The house is a lovely 1925 Craftsman. What it lacks in
modern amenities like up-to-date electrical, sliver-free floors and
non-cracking plaster, it makes up for in charm. For the most part, the house is
in great shape – it just needs some modernizing, attending to the finishes, and
fixing of bizarre decisions made by previous residents. One such decision
resides on our porch – I would say it “darkens” our porch, but since it is the light
fixture that wouldn’t really be accurate. Our full-width porch is truly a
feature of the house – it gives the home that beautiful, quintessential,
Craftsman street presence that I love. It is warm and welcoming – offering a
friendly transition from the outside world to the inside space. Unfortunately,
someone, at some point, saw fit to install a ceiling fan as the light fixture.
You read right, we have a ceiling fan as our front porch
light. A ceiling fan. Take just a moment to really let that sink in… A ceiling
fan. Outside. On a porch. In Seattle. We do not live in the Deep South. We do
not have 90-degree days with humidity so thick the air feels like you could
sculpt with it. No, this is Seattle. Summer temperatures are in the 70s and
there is almost always cool air coming off the Puget Sound. The chances of
needing to relax on a shaded, fan-cooled front porch with a mint julep in hand
are slim to none. Outdoor heaters, blankets, and hot toddies are more
appropriate Seattle porch accessories. And yet, each time I emerge onto my
porch or arrive home, the ridiculous ceiling fan suggests that I should ask
somebody to fetch me my evening cocktail so I can cool off while surveying the
plantation until dusk when the fireflies come out.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that we
didn’t just move into this house; we’ve lived in it for almost 12 years. One
could easily argue that we’ve had plenty of time to make some changes – if not
a full remodel, certainly such small problems as taking care of a particularly hideous
lighting fixture. One would be right, but one should also recall that I am
married to an architect and we have always had big plans for doing a major
overhaul on the house. Why nickel and dime ourselves on small fixes that will
just get swept away when the larger remodel finally happens? Why not wait and do it all in one fell swoop?
This is our reasoning. But there is never enough money and never enough time
and so, 12 years later, we still have a decrepit, old, white ceiling fan on our
front porch.
I’ve never stopped hating the ceiling fan. Occasionally I
notice it and it makes me simultaneously giggle and cringe when I consider how
ridiculously out of place it is. Most of the time, though, I just ignore it, as you do those things
you’ve lived with so long that you’ve trained your brain to simply not see anymore.
Sunday night I had occasion to notice. For one thing,
daylight savings time kicked in. Or off. Or whichever it is. I wish somebody
would just pick a time and stick with it, but that’s another topic for another
time. So Chester and I were coming home from running errands in the dark. We
hauled our packages onto the porch and, as I dug around in my purse for the
house keys (which are always, always, always at the bottom, no matter what –
yet another topic), I noticed a strange, strong breeze. It had been windy the
day before and for just a moment, I thought the wind must be picking back up
for another round of gusts, but that wasn’t right. The trees and plants weren’t
moving; the neighbor’s wind chimes weren’t clanging. It was only windy on the
porch – a strange, swirling kind of windy. Then I looked up.
The porch fan was going! I had never, not in 12 years, seen
the fan actually going. For more than a decade, it sat still and geographically
incongruent, white paint peeling sadly off the blades that did nothing more than
frame a light bulb. Now it was going with a vengeance, as if making up for lost
time or attempting to launch itself to a more appropriate locale. It was
spinning so fast, the whole thing was wobbling precariously.
At first I was afraid. What could have caused the ancient
fan to start spinning if not some sort of angry fan spirit? Then I remembered I
had taken down Halloween decorations the day before, including replacing the
black-light with a regular light-bulb. All I did was un-screw one bulb and
replace it with another, but I must have confused or otherwise angered the fan.
(Never mind the logical explanation that an electrical short occurred. Matt
pointed this out later and it is much too boring an explanation.) Finally I
climbed on a rickety old IKEA porch chair to get a closer look at the whirling,
wobbling fan. (Hey, why invest in nice, teak, well-crafted, outdoor furniture
when you’re just going to remodel in 20 years, right?)
Upon taking a closer look, I could see three little
pull-chains hanging down from the fan. I reached up cautiously, while ducking
to avoid having my head taken off, and pulled the first. It simply turned the
light off. I pulled the second; nothing happened as it was rusted in place. I
pulled the third and the fan began to slow down. Hallelujah! I thought it was
stopping, but no such luck – it continued to spin, just at a slower pace. I
pulled the string again – no change. At this point I climbed down from the
chair, both because I wasn’t sure what else to do and because Chester was pestering
me for some goldfish crackers. (Apparently, standing on a chair, in the dark,
cursing at and struggling with a possessed ceiling fan, does not indicate to a
hungry seven-year-old that you are busy.)
With Chester all settled in with a video and some crackers,
and the fan still spinning away, albeit somewhat more lazily, I decided to call
Matt who, naturally, is in China for this and pretty much every other domestic
debacle I’ve ever dealt with.
“Hey, how’s it going?” I began. “Uh, OK, what’s going on there?” Matt
asked, sounding concerned and skeptical of my casual tone.
“Well, you know the porch fan?”
“Yeah…”
“It’s going.”
“Going.”
“Yes, going. Spinning. Operating. Circulating the frigid air.”
“That’s weird,” Matt accurately summarized. “Did you try pulling the chains?”
In this manner, we walked through the pull-chain options and
results: One pull (slower), two pulls (no change) and three pulls (back to
jet-propulsion fast). Matt decided it must be an electrical short and that I,
therefore, needed to turn the whole thing off and keep it off. While I
certainly don’t want to burn the house down, the thought of no porch light for
almost a week of these new, dark, daylight-savings days didn’t thrill me. “Let
me just pull it one more time,” I said, teetering half-balanced on the chair. I
reached up and gave it a final yank and the whole chain came off in my hand.
Picture the scene: I’m standing on a chair, in the dark, on
my porch in Seattle, under a seriously malfunctioning ceiling fan, with a
cordless phone between my shoulder and ear and a broken-off chain in my hand, trying
to get help from a person in China. It was at this point that I listened closely
for the laugh-track… I scanned the perimeter
for a hidden camera…
“Are you there?” Matt said. “It broke off,” I replied. “The
whole chain broke off.” There was a moment of silence before I said the only thing
I could think to say… “Can you bring me
a mint julep?”
