The 400 Pound Refrigerator That Ate Boston

The fact that this is a re-tooled repost of an old blog is a testament to my laziness and should by no means be taken as a true reflection of the esteem I have for          THE INTERNET

I'm a slacker.

Caveat-Caveat-Caveat

This tale is not linear but resides somewhere outside the bounds of time and space. It's merely installment #10,002 of the serio-comic travesty I call Life. A core sample taken from the middle of the shit-pile. A detailing of my disastrous and always futile struggle with technology - both simple and complex.

It is a story full of evil portent and doom that I hope will both enlighten and uplift.

The thematic message that struggling against ones fate is futile should be obvious. 

It has not always been so obvious to the protagonist: me.

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The 400 Pound Refrigerator That Ate Boston

I had some time to ponder my fate as I swung back and forth, suspended by one ankle. The color of the sky, the way the sun glinted off a cellophane wrapper caught in the rusty chain link fence directly below me. The clothes line attaching me to the third story porch rail gave just a bit then stopped, giving me the hope that it might hold just long enough for help to arrive.

Some might get philosophical in such a situation; contemplating the multi-fold path of life, the improbable chain of events necessary to bring one to arrive at just such a moment. The many choices made or avoided inexorably leading one to the point where you're suspended head down twenty feet above the ground with only a frayed clothesline staving off certain mangulation.

It was just my rotten fucking luck that I was sober for what came next.

Sure. We've all heard tales where people in similar fixes have that moment of peace as their end approaches, where they become calm and reflective. Maybe they see lost loved ones beckoning them from tranquil green shores and a feeling of peace envelopes them in its warm embrace.

I spent the last few moments before the rope snapped gibbering like a baby.

If my luck held true, there would be a pit bull lurking in the corner of the garbage strewn yard below.

Waiting.

*****

The ad in The Boston Phoenix read:

Roommate Wanted: DORCHESTER – 2 Roommates Seek 3rd to share apt. $125 per mo./ heat & elec. incl. Cent. loc. Conv, access to pub. trans. Quiet, clean, respons M or F. Nonsmoker only. Call Arthur @ (617).…

The only thing qualifying me to call for that ad was that I was an M or an F but call I did.

I was in luck; the apartment was still available. So, I arranged to meet Arthur for a roommate interview at the apartment the next day.

I'd been couch surfing for a few weeks. Ever since "the incident" that got me booted out of the house I'd been sharing with seven other idiots in Jamaica Plain, one of good old college town Boston's notorious student ghettos. Not that any college would give credits for my major. You'd have to go out toward Amherst to find a school that gave degrees in hallucinogens.

Yeah so one day I came home from work and found my housemates gathered round the kitchen table. My duffel bag was packed and sitting by the back door indicating I'd be the topic to be discussed. Apparently, I drank too much for that particular group of unemployed vegan solar powered dope smoking faux-anarchist hippies.

Mea culpa.

They were really quite decent about it. Eddie and his life partner K wanted to hug and shit as I was leaving. Just as well I got out before they discovered that half their Grateful Dead bootleg library was taped over with random fart noises. I was a pioneer in the early avant-garde Industrial Fart Sound movement in case you didn't know. Many called me the John Cage of the bean burrito.

Soooo misunderstood by my contemporaries.

But that's how I found myself off to find a place to live in Dorchester.

Dorchester is a weird neighborhood. It's this small Irish enclave, less famous than its Fenian shithole cousin, South Boston or "Southie" (watch the last ten minutes of Scorscese's The Departed), The only thing Dorchester's got going for it over Southie is its higher pub to people ratio. Seriously, there's a fucking bar on every corner and two to three in between. There's nothing like alcohol to compliment the naturally even keeled Irish demeanor.

The area is bracketed by a Vietnamese neighborhood to the north and the predominantly Black areas of Ashmont and Roxbury to the south and west respectively. The dirty water of Boston harbor blocks any possibility of escape to the east.

Columbia Point, my stop. I got off the train, adjusted the headphones of my knock-off Walkman and turned up the volume. John Lydon's angst filled voice screamed in my ears about black rubber body bags as I made my way past abandoned buildings and litter strewn lots.

I found the place easy enough. Right on the main thorofare of Dot Ave. The building itself was in the style known as "Dorchester triple-decker" which is another way to say white trash club sammich. The back porches sagged downward at a frightening angle and the balusters on the railing were popped out like jagged teeth. The place was one step ahead of a wrecking ball. But it was in my price range, near the train, a bar, and a liquor store so I was set.

A pack of shifty eyed teens were holding court on the stoop of the building drinking Narragansett tall boys. Edging past them, I got the up and down look then ceased to exist for them. No lock, no buzzer, I walked right in.

Two things hit me right away. An over powering odor of cat urine - like the cat died trying to pass a kidney stone, and a TV blasting at an incredible volume somewhere inside. Garbage was piled on the stairs and in the hallway like snow drifts.

The apartment was on the third floor. As I passed the open doorway of the lone second floor apartment I found the source of the TV noise. An obese couple sitting in their underwear watching Dynasty glared at me from a natty couch. It was hard to tell where they began and the couch ended. The gamma rays from the boob tube must've melted them into the pleather cushions.

Someone with any sense would have turned around right there. But you know what? To my twisted way of thinking, these were all good portents. If I moved in I knew I'd feel like the lord of fucking creation every time I left the apartment. 


Like a daily affirmation that I hadn't hit rock bottom on the food chain.

I waved hello at the TV couple and left them to fret over the troubles of the Carringtons.

Jesus. Dynasty! It was 1985 and a lot of pop culture escaped me. It still escapes me today and most of the drugs have worn off.

Arthur answered the door. My first impression of Arthur was that he looked like a cross between the Frito Bandito and Charles Bronson.

Turned out later, I wasn't too far off on either count. He was short, in his early thirties with sallow acne scarred skin, wiry black hairs sprouting from surprising places on his face complimenting his wiry frame in a simian way. His eyes shifted when he talked in the manner of a hunted varmint.

In fact he kind of looked like this

spooky

He invited me in to sit on a worn floral patterned couch for the interview in the "parlor."

The stuff inside the apartment was old and worn but otherwise the place was immaculate. Definitely no palace but it was neat and orderly. I was almost disappointed. The air smelled of malicious pine cleaner. It could have been masking the stench of a rotting roommate corpse. A boy can dream can't he?

Arty went over the usual roommate stuff – timely payments of rent and whatnot, no dead hookers, keep the noise down and esoterica like "if you touch snacks clearly marked as mine – you die." Arty was a Boston Cab driver so he kept odd hours working mostly nights. I'd have to be quiet and not disturb him during the day. Not a problem since I too liked to sleep during daylight hours.

He gave me a quick tour. The common room or parlor, which I'd already seen. Then there was his room which I was only allowed a peak inside. Stacked books and a cot on the floor. Next, the one other roommates room; a guy named Joel who wasn't there at the moment, full of audio equipment and a bass guitar leaned up in the corner. Apparently Joel had no say in the governance of roommate decisions.

The pealing paint in the bathroom looked like hieroglyphics, more scrape than paint. No shower just a rusty old claw foot tub with a spray attachment. Well there was always the Y or the Pine Street Men's Mission I thought. The sagging back porch I'd seen from outside was packed with crap. Old bikes, garbage bags, soggy cardboard boxes hiding what looked like nests. So the secret of the clean apartment was that all the garbage ended up on the porch.

My room would be the one right over Dorchester Avenue… and a Boston Globe distribution center as I found out later, 3AM one Sunday morning to be exact. Small and garret like it fit right in with my tortured artist delusions.

Oh the tortured part was real enough.

Arthur probably wasn't any more impressed with me with my spiked purple hair and leather jacket - I did mentioned this was in 1985 right? - than I was with him or the apartment. But he seemed anxious to get me in there paying rent ASAP and I need a place to sleep that provided marginal protection from the elements. The place was ridiculously cheap so we agreed I'd move in as soon as I could get my stuff over there.

Was that the sickly sweet smell of decomposition underneath the Formula 409?

I'm not now and was not then the most observant person but I did have one question for Arthur before I moved in. Something I'd noticed about the kitchen on our whirlwind tour.

The kitchen was as spotless at the rest of the interior of the apartment. There wasn't so much as a dirty spoon in the sink. But right there in the middle of the floor where a kitchen table should have been were three refrigerators.

Yes, three large old refrigerators, refrigerators of the "kid killer" variety. You know, the kind you hear about in news stories. Kids playing hide-and-go-seek end up stuck in one only to be discovered years later, a dried up husk clutching a perfectly preserved and still edible Twinkie.

Arthur told me that none of them worked. There was no working refrigeration in the apartment. He wanted to get a new one but there wasn't enough room for four refrigerators. It hadn't occurred to him to throw out the broken ones. Probably because of the three flights of rickety stairs he'd have to lug them down to get them to the curb.

Normally something like this wouldn't bother me. Most of my food came out of cans like Popeye. But some of those cans of food would be beer and that my friends would be a deal breaker. Warm beer. What am I, fucking English? Warm beer is downright unpatriotic.

It took me all of a week living with Arthur till I'd had enough of squeezing through those menacing behemoths to get to the sink. One of them caught me one night on a rusty projection as I tried to pass by giving me a nice gash in my side. The fridges drew first blood in the first skirmish. 


I was determined to even the score.

At night I'd lay awake imagining them coming to life. Sentient refrigerators oozing rancid drip-pan juice haunted my dreams. Their interiors covered in grey green mold, giving off an evil swamp gas light, waiting to devour me in my sleep.

Maybe there were already kids in there. 


Zombie kids.

So I formulated a plan. I'd disassemble them and then cart them down to the curb while Arthur slept and no one needed to be any the wiser. I had a pair of pliers and a screw driver in my duffel already, kept there in case I saw a street sign or something I wanted that was anchored to something else.

Progress was slow. It took me nearly a full day to get the door off of one of them. I had to stop in the middle to wrap my hand in a dish towel to staunch a bit of minor arterial spurtage. I don't know if it was my cursing that woke Arthur or if, like a vampire, he sensed a mortal invading his territory. And the blood.

At first he cursed me out for waking him. Then when he saw what I was doing he got excited and readily agreed to help me kill the refrigerators. He even knew where we could pick up a working fridge for forty bucks. Turns out he was just waiting for someone dumb enough to help him carry it up three flights of stairs. Our other roommate Joel had held out on Arthur ever since moving in a year prior.

Joel knew something about Arthur I didn't.

After a week living in the same apartment, I thought I had a sense of Arty. He was basically an OK guy if a bit on the wrapped too tight side. Back then, I thought anyone who didn't party the way I did was wrapped too tight because I was an idiot. Arthur didn't drink at all so to my mind he had to be some kind of ticking time bomb. The real reason he didn't drink was because he was even less successful at it than I was.

See. He'd been in the merchant marines for a few years and had got his ass thrown in jail every time he went ashore.

Every time.

Florida chain gangs, Gulf Coast jail cells, eating baloney sandwiches and drinking red Kool-aid under the hot Texas sun for stealing a cowboy hat on a drunken dare. The guy was the veritable Obi Wan of stupid.

The saying goes that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. I became his padwan*

*Star Wars reference, not jailhouse lingo for prison punk.

The watery blue tattoos on his forearms he'd picked up in Prison in Sardinia. I had to look in an atlas to find out where the fuck Sardinia was.

Arty took control immediately. As the senior roommate, the one whose name was on the lease and being a former merchant marine, he had rank which he pulled.

Arty's scheme involved moving the refrigerators to the back porch and then lowering them down to the street below using ropes and pulleys. Work smarter, not harder, right? He assured me that he knew what he was doing. Being a former sailor he knew all about knots and shit. We'd take it slow and everything would be OK.

Uh huh.

Arthur found an old clothes line and lashed it around a fridge. He looped the line around one of the roof support posts twice for safety. Up the fridge went up onto the porch rail balanced there by Arty as I held the rope wrapped around my hand to lower it, one foot stepping on the rope to keep the line taut.

For one golden moment we felt the thrill of accomplishment.

It's still blurry. There was a zipping sound. The sound of a rope opening up a furrow across my palm and then a jerk at my feet then a loud crash… like… uh… an old refrigerator dropping from three stories up.

Some sounds ARE unique. Trust me.

So there I was dangling from the rope attached to the porch. The other end wrapped around my ankle. Then the rope snapped. My plummet was slowed slightly by a rusty nail that caught in my jeans and then in the flesh of my thigh. Just long enough for me to grab a hold of the support beam for the porch right below ours. Just long enough for gravity to swing me right side up and then help me to do a face plant into the building to slide down like in a Warner Brothers cartoon.

When we got back from the emergency room the other two refrigerators were still there to mock me.

Fuck them. Fuuuuuck them. I convinced Arty that we should just shove the fucking things over the rail. It kinda worked once so why not again? No ropes. Let them crash. No one called the cops on us the last time.

I went down into the street below to act as a spotter and warn off any toddlers. The next fridge hit the street with a satisfying crunch landing perfectly at the curb. Didn't even need to move it. It could be collect right from where it landed.

No one so much as poked their head out their door to see what was up. It was THAT kind of neighborhood.

Excellent!  One more to go.

The coast was clear so I gave Arty thumbs up for mission go. Greg Louganis couldn't have performed a more intricate dive. It spun and pirouetted on its way down then hit the edge of the curb and the fucker bounced five feet in the air before landing on the back of a Datsun parked there. The car bounced on its springs and ended up with its ass end out in the street.

As we stood there wondering what to do, a man came out of his house across the road, calmly got behind the wheel of the Datsun and moved it across the street. I started to wave an apology (hampered by the sling on my arm) but the guy ignored me. He locked his car and then went back inside his house without a word. I guess he didn't have any questions for the bruised punk who looked like he'd been hit by a bus dropping refrigerators on his car. Pretty self explanatory.

I still wonder about that poor schmo, maybe he just lost his job at the aluminum siding factory, looking out his window and seeing a refrigerator drop onto his car…. The one he'd just made his last loan payment on. Then going back to sit in his breakfast nook, bury his nose in the morning paper and ponder what fresh shit sandwich life might serve up next.

We went and got the new fridge later that day and paid one of the stoop kids five bucks to help us carry it up the stairs.

Me? I crawled into my room to lick my wounds with a bottle of 100 proof peppermint schnaaps. I eventually passed out on top of a nest of dirty clothes and half finished law school applications and had evil dreams.

Epilogue: The new refrigerator died two weeks later – I don't drink anymore or live in Boston – I'm someone's dad.

The End.