"That there furnace..."

Picture Gomer Pyle from the old Mayberry days with Andy Griffith.

Now picture Gomer with snow white hair, reading glasses, and a little cell-phone thing clipped to his ear. That's exactly who showed up at our back door this afternoon after we called the heating and air-conditioning company to check the furnace.

We called this particular company because the previous owners had given us their card-- they have taken care of the unit since it was installed in 1995. They have the records of what's been done, what should have been done, and what never got done. (The never-got-done part is what's catching up to us now.)

So when Gomer came in, the first thing he said was that the kitchen looked different. Well, of course it looks different... when the old owners moved, they moved all of their furniture with them. (Their furniture was very nice, but we like ours better.)

We told Gomer what the problem was...... the furnace had kicked off sometime after midnight on Friday night and we woke up to a frigid first floor on Saturday morning. We didn't have a clue as to what happened because the unit for the second floor was working just fine. My husband opened the hatch-door thing on the furnace and poked around a bit.... found a re-set button and pressed that..... the furnace kicked on about twenty minutes later, but it took a good long while for the first floor of the house to feel even a little bit warm. Of course, a furnace never goes out when the temperature is 75.... it waits for a 40-degree morning.

The heating company got back to us this morning. I asked them over the phone if they had an emergency number for weekends-- "Well, sure we do..... but we just can't be giving out my cell phone number to everyone..... so only my customers have that there cell number. Know what I mean?"

When I gave them our address and told them the problem, they realized that this house was on their customer list, so they arranged to get out here as soon as possible. And that's when we met Gomer. He told us that the unit was installed in 1995, and "this, that, and the other thing right yonder there" had been replaced since then. With this new problem........ he can either replace "this here whoziwhats" or "we can just go on and replace the whole dadgum unit with a Trane."

My husband told Gomer that he thought Carrier was the better unit. Gomer insisted that Trane was the way to go.... "most 'specially with these here big old houses.... y'all can cool 'em down a whole lot faster than y'all can heat 'em up.... and don't think your propane company don't love y'all to pieces." (Indeed they must.)

Before he left here, Gomer took all the measurements and wrote down everything he would need for both options--- to either replace the faulty part, or replace the "whole dadgum unit." He will call us in a day or two. Until then, the furnace is working, and will probably keep working just fine, but may need a little "kick up on that there re-set button" if it continues to work itself into a fever with all the unusually cold weather we're having lately.

While the heating guy was here, he asked us if we had picked the pecans up from our trees.... and we told him we certainly did. He said if it hadn't been so cold, we would have had more pecans. (More pecans? We picked enough pecans to make pies for everyone from here to San Antonio, for goodness sake!) Gomer also saw our chickens outside, and asked us if we were getting any eggs from them. I told him that the hens give us eggs every day, even on the cold days we've had lately. "Well, imagine that........ y'all move up here from Clear Lake and turn y'all-selves right into farmers!"

We certainly did, Gomer.