Goodbye, Old Friend

Today they hauled away our loyal, hard working, reliable old freezer to be recycled.  A new, sleek, shiny, black, frost-free replacement stands proudly in the garage now.  Its exterior temperature gauge is a subtle reminder of its technological superiority. It looks like a true product of the modern age.

There is no way to tell how old our freezer was.  We didn't count its ice rings or carbon date any of its food residues.  My parents' neighbors passed it along to us, used, thirty years ago.  In its lifetime, it housed chili, barbeque and pea soup, untold half gallons of ice cream, each summer's harvest of pesto sauce, hops for brewing beer, caraway seeds for rye bread, winter food for the bees, suet cakes for the birds and as much as 28 quarts of minestrone soup at one time.  All the while it lived with us, it never complained, never faltered, never even hiccupped - it just plugged away, doing its duty.  You can't say that about most family members.

I feel ungrateful and guilty, being the instigator of the freezer's demise.  However, I grew afraid it was going to die on me, especially when we went out of town.  I had visions of coming home to a rotten smelly mess.  I no longer trusted it with our precious pesto sauce, which I had moved to the refrigerator's freezer - an insult which, I fear, the freezer never quite forgave.  I also got tired of always opening a freezer choked with heavy frost.   Yes,  I know that manually defrosting a freezer builds character.  However, I officially retired from character building of any sort when I turned sixty.  (The photo below is the aftermath of a blizzard and ice storm at Stokely Creek in Canada, but it looks exactly like the interior of the freezer at its worst.)

This morning, Paul gave the freezer a fond farewell as he left for work.  He has been its primary caregiver in recent years, eagerly anticipating and even reveling in the experience of defrosting it two or three times a year.  He loved going "mano a mano" with its thick frost and stubborn chunks of ice, emerging victorious after hours of chipping and emptying pans of water.  He'll have to find a new challenge.

After lunch, I emptied the freezer's contents into coolers, trying to be as discrete and respectful as possible.  Around 3:00, a genial, smiling, Best Buy delivery guy appeared and gently wheeled the freezer out to his waiting truck.  When its door unexpectedly swung open, he didn't make any insulting remarks about the substantial frost inside.  He also didn't notice the interior chocolate drippings from my Christmas Ice Cream Sundae Cake.  I thought the freezer was entitled to keep a reminder of the last in its long line of glorious holiday seasons when it was stuffed to capacity with goodies.

The new freezer is beautiful. It absolutely radiates confidence like those girls I used to envy in Seventeen magazine who never needed make-overs.  I've already been out to the garage several times to admire and marvel at it, both inside and out.  It is the same size as the old freezer, but it has bigger shelves and more interior space.  In addition, it is both clean and frost free.  The contents are uncharacteristically well organized - there won't be any mystery items of indeterminate age and origin emerging from this baby.  But, I also bet it won't be around 30 years from now.