Elliot and his dad played golf at the golf course, while his mom and I walked around the downtown area. Embedded here and there on the sidewalks is a little walk of fame; brass-looking tiles of fame for the winners of each frog jump. Frogs such as Budweiser, Rosie the Ribiter, and For the Sign are among the frogs represented. There are several antique and "miscellaneous" shops, and a few yard sales. We stopped at a rummage sale for the fire station, where we each got a few books. A 1953 Pillsbury promo cookbook, a 1979 Hershey's cocoa cookbook, and a few classic hardcovers in near new condition :D
Ice cream was on the agenda. It was hot, but beautiful out, and my mother-in-law and I were walking about downtown and stopped for some of the best ice cream my tongue has had the pleasure of entertaining. Orange ice, tasting fragrantly of fresh-squeezed oranges, with the quality of orange oil blended sweetly with a light, quintessentially vanilla ice cream. Not overpowering, just thoroughly and perfectly vanilla.
But the best part didn't have to do with food. It had to do with the $20 Kirby....
We walked into the small yard sale. For no particular reason, I sighted a vacuum, and decided to see what it was. I am not generally interested in used vacuums, but I thought it looked familiar. My suspicions were confirmed, it was an old Kirby. Kirbys are known for lasting a loooooooooooooooooong time, they're tough little things, and ever since going through that shady training program to sell them, despite having a distaste for the business practice and price, I did fall for the vacuum. They really are good. And as a result of the training I know how to work one of those things, and disassemble them with no trouble. I was also told in this training that for the most part, the kirbys don't vary considerably from model to model. Wandering about for a bit trying to find the purveyor of this sale, I finally found him. Thinking the man might want more than I had on me, I decided anyway to ask the price. "make me an offer", so I blurted "twenty bucks?" "ok". Oh cool. But what if I just spent 20 bucks on something that doesn't work? "Do you mind if I plug it in and see if it works?" "not at all, there's an outlet somewhere out here". We found the outlet, but then were lost on finding the end of the power cord. "huh, I can't find the end of the cord" I said, to which he replied "good, I'm not the only blind one then". A couple more minutes revealed that there was no plug, it had been cut off. But all was not lost. "Here let me get my blade, I just have to strip off the end of the cord". He proceeded to strip the plastic to reveal two copper wires, and to my surprise proceeded to stick the ends into the outlet! He seemed as though he had done this sort of thing before, and indeed one of the things I remember about the calaveras/tuolumne county areas is most people's penchant for "jerry-rigging" and improvisation. The motor turned on, and sounded good! Elliot is fairly handy, took one look (when we picked them up), and declared that it would be zero trouble for him to stick a new plug on it, and in fact we probably had something in the storage shed that we could cannibalize for one. I am probably more elated than the normal sane person would be, but fleck it.
And that's the story of the $20 1969 Kirby model Classic 1 CR that spent ages tucked away, forgotten, that found a new appreciative home with people less than half it's age.
I have spent a little time now "playing" with it, basically disassembling it and getting acquainted. It is similar enough to the new models that it's not proving difficult to figure out. Unfortunately nobody emptied the bag before putting it in storage, so I now have some antique vacuum dust on the floor from opening it, and no vacuum to pick it up (elliot hasn't put the plug on yet).
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