Perhaps no one cares about this but us….
but it's all too odd not to post it.
About 10 days ago as Den and I were driving along he suddenly
said that perhaps we should look into buying a new freezer.
Growing up I was taught that you don't buy new appliances until
the old ones quit working. So it would have been more like me to
say, "What's wrong with the freezer we have?"
But instead, to my very frugal husband who does not like to buy
anything….I said, "Yes, let's do it!" This surprised him and even
more so when I said, "Let's go look at some tonight." Den started
back tracking a little…."well it was just a thought….."
Then I started pointing out that even though we had the freezer for
about 7 years the new ones are probably more energy efficient.
Den shot back with, "7 years?? You already had that freezer
when I married you nearly 16 years ago."
That couldn't possibly be true. I did buy a freezer the week after
Bill died in 1996, but I was sure that one had quit working, and
Den and I bought another one sometime around 2007.
I explained to Dennis that I always kept track of
when I defrosted it and it starts in 2007
(you can't see it but there is a 2007 in pencil under the 2008)
(And just so you'll know if you happen to notice "the week Alex died" ….he was our cat.)
So this freezer was either bought on Nov 30, 1996 (I had notes of it
in my daytimer) or we bought it around 2007. Den insisted he was
right. I thought I was.
It became a mystery. I wanted to know…..did we have this freezer
for 17 years? Or did we only have it for about 7?
I contacted General Electric….they told me if I could locate the
serial number on it they could tell us the year it was made. We
hunted everywhere possible on that freezer and there was NO
serial number on it anywhere!
Nevertheless, we bought the new freezer and it was delivered
yesterday. We kept both freezers plugged in over night….the old
one FULL of food, and the new one getting cold enough to use.
Next morning, I started little by little transferring food from the
old freezer into the new one. Well guess what? A few hours into
this the old freezer died. Suddenly and totally gone.
I mean, what are the chances of that??
It had been working great for 17….or 7 years. If we hadn't bought
the freezer when we did, today we would
have lost all our food in that old (or not so old) freezer.
It's 105' today and probably hotter in our garage.
That food would have melted and gone bad within hours.
But guess what else happened?
After we got the last of the food out of the old freezer….
Den kept looking it over, still trying to find that serial number!
He even looked under the bottom shelf of the door…
No serial number there either, but guess what he did find…
This:
Notice the date. I looked at it and said, "You mean that has been
stuck to the bottom of those shelves since March of 1997? That
is too weird."
Then Den adds, "The date is 1997."
Then it clicked with me, "Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. This proves
you were right! No serial number, but now we know for sure
this was the original freezer I bought at the end of 1996!
Mystery is solved!"
Who would have thought….the old freezer dies the very day after
the new freezer arrives. And then the label on the old Costco roll
package proved how old the freezer truly was.
I wanted to write this for our posterity.
They will know we truly lived.
And we had a freezer.