THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc. DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 1, 1994 TAG: 9406010043 SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: B8 EDITION: FINAL SOURCE: LAWRENCE MADDRY DATELINE: 940601 LENGTH: Medium
It's true. According to a survey by the U.S. Census Bureau, 47 percent of households here toss their potato peels, coffee grounds and unwanted leftovers into garbage disposals instead of cans. That's 5 percent more than the national average.
{REST} When I moved into a small condominium on the Chesapeake Bay a few years ago, I forgot to ask whether it came with a garbage disposal. Then one night, in total darkness, I reached for the switch that turns on the light above the sink. I accidentally flicked the wrong one. ``GRAAAANK.'' The disposal roared to life. It scared the beegeebus out of me.
Now, I am startled by it about once a week. In time it will give me a heart attack. The switches are side by side on the same switch plate. I can never remember which is which.
To give you an idea of the problem this poses, I want to explain that my multiwindowed condo with glass doors is in the middle of a complex arranged in a horseshoe pattern. When the lights from other condos are turned off and mine is completely illuminated, it stands out in the darkness like a lighted fishbowl.
Many times I have been awakened by a phone call late at night, padding half-awake across the carpeting - in either underwear or ragged pajamas - to answer it. Who knows who might be watching if I turn on all the lights? Maybe the queen is visiting somebody in the apartment across the way. I don't want her to see me in my shorts and begin chanting, ``Teacher, teacher, I declare, I seen someone's underwear!.''
So I prefer not to flick the light switch that illuminates the entire living room like a showboat. Instead, I reach over the counter phone, groping for the switch plate that illuminates the small spotlight over the sink, invariably flicking the wrong switch.
That may seem a small matter. But the racket my disposal makes is indescribably noisy. It sounds as though the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz has gotten stuck somewhere in the plumbing, rotating his clanking metal body in a frenzied attempt to bore out through the basin with his metal hat. GRAAANK! . . . WRRUUUNK! Never heard any-thing like it.
Our love affair with garbage disposals here in Hampton Roads is not shared by Mabel, my cocker spaniel. The disposal is so high on the list of things Mabel hates that it almost springs off the page top. It ranks higher on her dread list than a vacuum cleaner, Cuisinart or a thunderstorm.
Once the disposal's relentless grinding begins, she leaps off the sofa, clearing the coffee table, a taffy-colored blur crossing the carpet. All evidence of her presence vanishes - except for a pair of glowing eyes - as she hunkers beneath the bed, praying for the clanking to stop.
She's never more pleased than when the disposal is broken or stopped up by a nail. I once jammed it with a nail, which rolled off the counter and inside the drain while I was banging another like it into the wall to hang a picture. Freeing objects that have clogged the disposal's mechanism is tricky business. I have to lie on my back beneath the sink, inside a cabinet smelling of cleansers, Murphy's oil and soap powders, jiggling at a cylinder hole with an L-shaped bar to free it.
Mabel is always eager to help with the work. She climbs inside the cabinet beneath the sink with me. Her hot breath descends, then a wetness splashes across my cheek as she licks it rapidly and thoroughly. Poor dear, she does that in the belief I am taking the dreaded monster apart, or even better, removing it forever.
Incidentally, I thought it best not to mention that survey to her. She's so easily depressed, you know. by CNB