Empty Your Pockets

There are a dozen or so photos of my trip to Martha's Vineyard in my last post http://owlinmaine.blogspot.com/2013/09/marthas-vineyard.html.  It gives a glimpse of the towns we visited, Oak Bluffs and Edgartown and Menemsha, in addition to the town of Vineyard Haven where we stayed.  My new profile picture was taken by my daughter on the beach in Oak Bluffs.

The weekend before I left on vacation my front loading washing machine started making a horrible noise so loud that I heard it upstairs, like shrapnel shooting off somewhere in the drum.  I stopped the machine but couldn't see anything inside.  It was then okay to spin and drain, and it was quiet for the next load.  The third load of laundry set it off again, a noise that sounded like metallic fireworks going off.  We unplugged the machine, turned off the water, and I called a repairman. 

The guy just left.  I have called the service department to commend Jeff for his work; he found a problem that someone else might have missed.  When he didn't hear faulty bearings and couldn't see anything amiss within the back of the machine, Jeff removed the front bottom panel to check the water pump.  He figured out how to remove the trap and this is what he found:

two dozen coins, a battery, nails, a fuse, a razor blade, a pencil, and various other bits of metal.  I can tell from the gunk present and the accumulated corrosion, things have been collecting for a long time.  I will take credit for the piece of fabric [note to self: hand wash any tiny pieces of material] but the credit for the rest of the mess belongs to Ken.  He has been washing his own work clothes for almost thirty years.  I stress to him how important it is to empty his pockets.  Obviously it's time for another lesson.  We lucked out.  The washing machine still works and it cost a fraction of what a new machine would cost to find the problem.

I looked closely to see how these things worked their way through the system.  There is a slit in the metal under the rubber gasket, which I do clean periodically, where things must go when they work themselves free.  Who knew?  Now we know it's really important to empty your pockets!