You Might Be A Redneck...

We are not your typical Texans. I grew up here, but was raised by non-Texans, who did their absolute best to keep us from sounding and acting like hicks. Jerry was raised in Ohio, with no exposure to "the South" whatsoever. We don't really talk with Southern accents (although I can turn it on at any time, and speak with with a twang involuntarily if I am around friends who have a strong accent), and we don't say "y'all." We don't have broken down cars in the yard, and we never eat with our fingers! However, sometimes the redneck around us seeps on in.

Our dryer has been having trouble getting clothes dry in a timely fashion lately. The sensor had quit working and each load was taking 90+ minutes to dry. So we called the repair man out to the house. After carefully looking at our machine, he told us that there were about $350 worth of repairs he could do, but he didn't think any of them would actually make the clothes dry any faster. His diagnosis: vacuum everything out really well. Now we thought we had tried this before calling him, but he showed us all sorts of places we could vacuum that we didn't know about! We had vacuumed down the lint trap, but lo and behold, there is another pocket that traps lint (not by design) that can only be reached through the lint trap. So we set out to vacuum (and by we, I totally mean Jerry by himself).

The only problem came when we realized we didn't have a vacuum tool that was both long enough and skinny enough to fit down into the vent! So out came the redneck solution: paper towel tube and tape! And whamo-presto!

Now the lint is gone, and the dryer dries my loads in about 60 minutes. Still not stellar, but the fix was free (well, except for that $60 charge for the man to tell us where to vacuum) rather than $350! Who said redneck was always a bad thing?