Rest in Peace
The Appliance Memorial Garden
In loving memory of the machines who served the Carswell family faithfully,
Ohio and Florida, 1941 to the present

Welcome, friends. I am Celia Carswell, I am eighty-one years old, and I have outlived a great many machines.

I kept house in Ohio from 1940, when Alvin and I were married, until 1982, when he retired and we came down to St. Petersburg like everybody else. Alvin passed in 1991. He was not an appliance, so he is not in this garden, but he would have laughed at it and then gone off to see what was the matter with the dryer.

Over sixty years a lot of hardworking things have come through our door, done their best for us, and gone. Nobody ever said a word over any of them. It seemed to me that somebody ought to. So here they are, with their dates and their survivors, the way the newspaper does it for people. I have left off the makers' names. Most of the companies are gone too, and it isn't the company I miss.

My grandson John set up this computer for me last Christmas, and the ladies in my Tuesday computer class at the library helped me with the roses.

In Loving Memory
The Wringer Washer
1941 – 1962

She came to us in April of 1941, on the back of a truck from the hardware store, and she was the proudest thing in our house until Mattie was born. She lived on the back porch in summer and in the cellar in winter, and she rolled between the two on little wheels that never did go straight.

Every Monday for twenty-one years she chugged and sloshed and walked herself across the floor, and I fed the wet sheets through her wringer, two rollers that squeezed the water out so hard they would pop the buttons off a shirt if you didn't fold them inside. She took my apron string once, and very nearly the rest of me, and after that I kept my fingers flat and my hair tied up. During the war, when you could not buy a new washer for love or money, she washed everything we owned, and she never complained, though she did smell of hot rubber toward the end.

She saw us through Mattie's diapers in 1946 and Anthony's in 1955, and through every one of the years Alvin came home from the plant with grease to the elbows.

Survived by an automatic washer, white, who arrived in the spring of 1962 and who was never once as interesting.

She went to live on a farm in the next county with a young wife who paid eight dollars for her, and I like to think she is chugging there still. In lieu of flowers, fold your buttons inside.

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In Loving Memory
The First Television Set
1952 – 1966

He arrived in October of 1952, a cabinet model with a screen not much bigger than a cake pan, set in more polished wood than our dining table. The whole street came over that first evening to look at him, and some of them kept coming over for years.

He got two channels clear and a third on a good night, if the weather came from the right direction and Alvin went out and turned the antenna pole while I shouted through the window, "Better! Worse! Better! Stop!" In the mornings, before the programs started, he showed a test pattern, and Mattie would sit in front of it anyway, waiting. When a tube went, Alvin carried the whole sackful down to the drugstore and tested them one at a time on the machine by the door, and when that didn't work, the repairman came with his case and charged us more than I am willing to say.

When you turned him off, the picture shrank down to one little white dot in the middle of the screen and slowly went out. Anthony, when he was small, would sit on the rug and watch the dot go, and then ask to have it back.

Survived by a color set, 1966, and four more after that. The latest gets seventy channels and has nothing on.

Visitation was held in the den, where the family watched one last program together. In lieu of flowers, jiggle your antenna.

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In Loving Memory
The Percolator
1948 – 1979

Electric, chrome, with a glass knob on the lid where you could watch the coffee come up, pale at first and then darker, going blurp, blurp, blurp like a happy little frog. A present from Alvin's mother on our eighth anniversary, which I always suspected was a comment on my coffee before that.

She perked every single morning for thirty-one years. The whole house knew when she was done. She perked for bridge club, for the minister when he called, for the night Mattie was engaged and the night Alvin's father died, and for every Christmas morning from Truman to Carter. Her cord wore through twice and Alvin wrapped it with tape twice, and the third time I said that was enough.

Survived by a drip coffee maker, 1979, which makes a perfectly good cup and has never once said blurp.

Services were held at the kitchen sink. Memorial contributions may be made to the coffee fund at your church.

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In Loving Memory
The Avocado-Green Blender
1971 – 1987

She came at Christmas of 1971 from Mattie and her husband, to match the refrigerator and the stove, which were also avocado green, as was everything that year. She had eight push buttons with eight words on them, and in sixteen years I never did learn the difference between "whip" and "blend." I pushed whichever one was closest.

She made milkshakes for the grandchildren, pineapple drinks at New Year's, and baby food for John. She was also responsible for the Split Pea Soup Incident of 1974, when Alvin started her without the lid on. The ceiling over the stove was never the same color again, and neither was Alvin's good shirt.

She moved to Florida with us in 1982 and was the only green thing in the state that never needed watering. She gave out at last on a pitcher of lemonade in the summer of 1987, with a smell I will not describe.

Survived by a white blender, smaller, which my daughter tells me is in better taste.

The family asks that, in her memory, you check the lid.

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In Loving Memory
The Electric Can Opener
1963 – 1989

He was a wonder when he came. You set the can under his little magnet, pressed the lever down, and he hummed and turned the can around all by himself until the lid came up on the magnet, clean as a whistle. The neighbors came to watch him too, though not as many as came for the television.

Our cat Pudding could hear him from anywhere in the house, even asleep in the upstairs closet, and came running every time, even when it was only green beans. Pudding never forgave either of us for the green beans. He opened soup for twenty-six years and dog food for the dog who came after Pudding, and he came south with us and opened soup in Florida too, until his magnet finally let go in 1989 and the lids began dropping into the beans.

Survived by a hand-crank can opener, which was in the drawer the whole time, and which has now outlived every electric thing in this house.

Services private. The cat did not attend.

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In Loving Memory
The Eight-Track Player
1972 – 1982

He was not mine. He belonged to Anthony, who bought him with his grocery-bagging money when he was seventeen and kept him on the shelf in his bedroom with the volume up. When Anthony left home in 1974 he took his records and his radio and his good jacket, and left behind the eight-track player and four tapes, two of them the same album.

I had never played a tape in my life. One quiet winter afternoon I tried him, and I found out that an eight-track has a way of stopping in the middle of a song, going clunk, and carrying on with the next part somewhere else, so that no song in our house ever finished where it began. I grew fond of him anyway. I played those four tapes so many times I could tell you where every clunk came, and I would sometimes clunk along with him while I ironed.

He did not make the move to Florida. On our last morning in Ohio I set him out at the curb with his four tapes, and somebody took him within the hour. I prefer to think of it as adoption.

Survived by Anthony, now forty-four, who says he does not remember ever owning him.

Clunk.

~   ~   ~

In Loving Memory
The VCR
1986 – 1998

He came at Christmas of 1986 from both of the children together, with a card that said "Now you'll never miss your program." That card was the last true thing anybody ever said about him.

In twelve years he never once recorded what he was told. I asked him for a two-hour movie I had waited all week for, and he gave me a fishing program. I asked him for the news and he gave me the last half of the weather. One night he recorded forty minutes of snow, very carefully, and once, a whole evening of a channel I did not know we got. His clock blinked twelve from the week he arrived to the day he left, because the first time the power went out I decided I was not going to go through all that again, and I never did. John was the only one in the family who could make him behave, and John was nine years old and lived in Ohio.

He passed in his sleep in March of 1998, with a tape still inside him that he would not give back. We buried them together.

Survived by a new VCR, which John hooked up when he came down last Christmas and which I am not allowed to touch.

In lieu of flowers, send batteries.

In Intensive Care
Please keep them in your thoughts.

Visiting hours are any time. Please do not bring flowers. They will want to be watered.

Visit Your Departed Appliances
Readers have been sending me their own, and I have planted them in their own corner of the garden.

Mourners who have visited the garden since it opened in April:


Please write and tell me about the machines you have loved and lost:
[email protected]

Last updated Saturday, September 18, 1999