Doing My Part for the Local Economy

by Pa Rock

Cool Dude

It's a beautiful morning here in the Missouri Ozarks.  The sky is clear and the temperature is sixty-nine degrees F, with an expected high of seventy-nine.  The leaves have not begun to turn, but other than that, it feels like autumn.  Summer is definitely on the wane.

I had been told last Friday when my home air-conditioning unit died that getting a service person out to assess the situation would be a very long process, that they are a self-important lot with plenty of business and enjoy making people wait.  Yesterday I phoned two, one was the company that spends the most money on advertising and is the best known in town, and the other was a smaller company recommended by a friend.  It was Labor Day and I did not expect that either would be answering their phones - and they weren't.    The better-known company did not ever have its answering machine on, but the small company did, and I left my information.

I was pleasantly surprised early this morning when the small company called back.  The owner of the firm said that he would have time in an hour or so to come by and take a look at my unit, and an hour later he was pulling in the drive.   The owner of the company, who was doing his own service calls, was a young man (40-ish) who came across as both knowledgable and hard-working.  He said that my unit (which looks like it was purchased used from Fred Sanford not long after Lamont was born) was vintage 1996, and that it was suffering from an infestation of ants - which was not what had caused it to cease working, but the ants needed to be dealt with nonetheless.  After some testing he announced that the compressor had gone out.

The long and short of it is that the unit is too old for repairs and the replacement, for which I opted, will cost about as much as a one-owner, low-mileage used car with new tires, a kick-ass sound system, and a full tank of gas.  The new unit should be here next Monday or Tuesday.  The good news is on my end was that the warranty should outlast me.  The good news for the owner of the air-conditioning sales and service company is that now one of his kids can go to college.

Pa Rock does his part for the local economy!

Now we will see if my summer karma can last another week!