This is a story about an old domestic Viking deep freezer. It’s been in the French family for more than 50 years, and we got it second hand.
It started its years of service at Alexis Creek in the home of Bill and Edna Telford. They bought it from Eaton’s catalog. It was one of the first freezers in a private home in the community. My husband was the graderman at Alexis Creek at the time, and the job required the operator to have a pickup truck. When he went to Anahim Lake as road foreman, he didn’t need a pickup. Bill, who took over as graderman, did, so we traded Telfords the truck for their freezer. They’d had it maybe two years.
It is a big, heavy beast. It made the then bumpy trip to Anahim in the back of a dump truck. It went to Bridge Lake by professional movers but moved, by pickup, to a different house there, then to Williams Lake, again by professionals.
Fast forward to the 1990s when husband and I sold the family home to Son #3 and family. The freezer went with the house because we didn’t think it would last another move even if we could get it out of the basement. The freezer looks its age, and goodness knows how much electricity it gobbles, but it is still going strong.
We had a fridge that lasted almost 30 years, but I wonder if the freezer’s longevity isn’t some kind of a record?
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We Canadians complain about things, but thank heaven for medicare. Right-wing senators in the U.S. are so against President Barack Obama’s plan they are threatening to shut the entire government down rather than allow it. Why? Maybe they agree with Fox News Channel that “Obamacare is little more than a thinly veiled scheme to force Americans to live longer.”
Diana French is a freelance columnist for the Tribune. She is a former Tribune editor, retired teacher, historian, and book author.