A Salute to Uncle Wilbur

My Uncle Wilbur was an electrician, who had his own business, and worked his whole life making sense out of electricity. I think of him often. When I peek behind my computer, I can hear him sigh and say, “An electrician’s nightmare!” When I wind up the cord on the vacuum cleaner, I remember: “Never wind it around the hooks because then you wind it the same way and wear it out.” I think about him when I have an electrical problem and intone that old Kremer adage: “Wish I had Uncle Wilbur in my pocket.”

Today I played Uncle Wilbur. After waiting for several weeks for an overpriced-overworked-"who gives a hoot" Florida tradesman to order a new exhaust fan for my laundry room and get back to me, I went on line and ordered the thing myself, for the grand sum of $14.38, shipping included.

The box arrived and it sat and sat and sat and, finally, today I decided the deed must be done. Opened the box, dragged out the ladder, dragged my fat behind up the ladder and spent almost an hour trying to jam the thing into the opening in the ceiling. After bloodying several fingers, cursing and verging on tears, I finally realized I was trying to put it in backwards. The fan blades had to go up into the ceiling and then, by cracky, the whole thing slipped right into place, I was able to plug it into the outlet, the little screw that holds the works to the ceiling twirled in and, wonder of wonders, when I hit the switch, it worked!

Okay, now the plastic cover. How did that thing go on? Had one little wire doohickey that I knew had something to do with keeping the cover flush with the ceiling, but damned if I could figure it out. Called Nutone and talked to some wonderful little child named Charles or Carl, some "C" name, who said, “Whoops, you need two of the wire thingys. Give me your name and address and I’ll throw them in the mail to you,” and then proceeded to patiently walk me through how the wire doohickeys work!

Uncle Wilbur must be laughing himself silly.