One of the washers at the shop had a bearing go bad. When the laundry ladies would extract the clothes the machine would thump like a bass drum. This isn’t the kind of problem I can fix. It’s not something you get the maintenance contractor to fix. This when you call in a specialist. Sort of like how you don’t let your primary care provider do the brain surgery when you need your brain removed. You get a brain surgeon to do it. They’ve focused on that one thing.

We were told the team would arrive at noon so we made our plans accordingly. We need this machine to extract the clothes so we had to be done by noon. The manager told me that they were coming in from Columbia, two hours away. Better plan on 10:30. Sure enough, they got there at 10:27.

Neither of the owners nor the manager was in the shop at the time so the ladies called me to come over. Why? I don’t have any authority. What did they think? These two guys were going to replace the bearings as vandalism? I went over anyway. The ladies wouldn’t have left me alone about it.

I told the guys what we’d been hearing. I told them that we had one more load to extract. Ten minutes tops. The mechanic said that was great. He wanted to hear the machine running at top speed. Might not be the bearings. I told him he’d hear them thumping like a dog when you rub it a certain way.

Not a sound. That machine had been thumping on every load for ten days. Now it was running as quiet as a whisper. I felt stupid. Then I remembered that I wasn’t in authority. Not my decision. I called the owner and told him what happened. He said to tell them to check it regardless.

It was the bearings. Piece of cake they said. Hard work but pretty simple to do if you know how. As I left at the end of the day they had the machine torn apart. When I got in the next day it was still torn apart. Some piece of cake.

When the mechanic got there he had a different guy with him.

“Who’s this? The boss?”, I asked.

The mechanic was a “good ole boy”. He either didn’t take that as an insult or didn’t know it was. He just laughed and said that machine , “kinder whupped me yesaday. Ah’ll get ‘er today”.

Later on I went over to stare at them a while. That’s how bored I get at times. I stared at some guy fixing a machine.

“How’s it going?”, I asked.

“Wahl, I felt like cussin’ this here machine a few times but I don’t do no cussin’ in front a ladies. Sure wanted ta. But, Ah’ll get it yet. Ain’t but two-three guys ever whupped me. Ain’t no machine goin’ do it”.

No, probably not. Unless he gets run over by a truck.