Hughes-Appliance

A “Hughes-Appliance.” (Photo by BobbaLew.)

One of two flimsy draw-strings for one of our insulating honey-comb shades finally broke the other day, rendering what’s illustrated above, a honey-comb shade that only retracts one side.
What we have here is what was known as a “Hughes-Appliance” to our family long ago in northern Delaware.
An appurtenance that reflected our family was too cheap to actually fix anything.
For example, our house in northern Delaware had a wall-oven with a door held shut by an internal spring.
That spring finally broke, meaning the oven-door no longer stayed shut if the oven was in use.
Our family was not about to spend $40 or so to replace the spring, so an el-cheapo fix was applied to hold the door shut, namely a broom-handle wedged so it held the door shut.
That fix continued until the house was sold about 15-20 years later.
It would fall to the new house-owner to actually fix the oven-door, or replace the wall-oven, which was around 30 years old when the house was sold (and probably had never been cleaned).
That oven-door was only one example.
Our house was loaded with Hughes-Appliances, things held together with Scotch-tape or bobbie-pins.
Repairs made with coat-hangers.
No actual fixes.
And Hughes-Appliances stayed that way for time immemorial.
There was a natural-gas leak in the laundry-room which also contained our furnace and water-heater.
If anyone entered that laundry-room with a lighted match the house would have exploded.
I remember I stopped my father once as he was about to return to northern Delaware from our home in Rochester, NY, a trip of 375 miles. Cord was showing on his tires, but he made the trip anyway, claiming I was reprehensible.
Nothing happened, proving I was also stupid.
One time the radiator on one of his cars popped a leak, disgorging antifreeze all over and seizing the engine.
He plugged that leak with “Schmutzee” (“shmutt-zee”), some el-cheapo goop akin to chewing-gum.
Then he drove all the way home from Rochester to northern Delaware, and that radiator probably stayed that way until the car was junked.
My mother was concerned our house might be causing asthma-attacks, so petri-dishes were set on window-sills.
The petri-dishes freaked out the lab.
With any luck our draw-string honey-comb shade can be fixed. We can’t fish out the broken draw-string.
In fact, we can’t even see how to pop out the shade.
Our painter couldn’t either.

• “Hughes” is my last-name: “Bob Hughes,” aka “BobbaLew.”