THE TOASTER
Hi Ace,
You wanted to know about The Legend Of The Xmas We Ran Over The Toaster...
This is a true story. Honestly. Mostly.
We used to have an old toaster that worked brilliantly. It was so old that it could only do one side of the bread at a time. It was made about the same year that God got his first pushbike. It was called a Speedie and it was actually Made In Australia. Probably by the aborigines. Our toaster was so old you had to open each side of it to put the bread in because Thomas Edison hadn't invented the Popper-Upper yet.
This old toaster had two rubber bands on it to keep the flaps shut because the springs broke back in about World War Two but me and Grandma loved that toaster because it made great toast and it only set fire to the bread if you forgot to keep an eye on it. Which was about every Monday.
But one sad day the element in it went POOF! and no-one could sell us a new element because they'd stopped making them back in 1927. So we went to Myers and bought a flash new toaster with black and chrome bits that looked like a Chevvie Corvette and it toasted both sides of the bread at the same time and popped up when it was done. It was space age stuff.
The shiny new toaster had a twelve month guarantee. It was made in China. It was called a Hong-Che-Shum-Lui. This means something like "Beware of Lightning Strikes" but we didn't know that at the time. We thought we were finally in the 20th century of toast-making. We made lots of toast. We didn't get hit by lightning once.
It's popper-upper died after three months.
We took it back and they gave us a nice new toaster but they didn't say Sorry. The new one did seventeen slices of toast and it got depressed at the idea of having to do nothing but make toast all its life and it rolled over and decided to stop breathing so we took that one back as well.
They gave us another new one. I asked them if I could have a different brand this time but the gormless git who was in charge of the Dead Toaster Dept said that wasn't the way they did things.
It's really annoying when they put gormless gits in charge of such important departments. I think his name was Morris. He was really gormless. He didn't have any gorm at all. And he didn't say Sorry this time either.
I tried to be pleasant about it but that didn't work so we took our shiny new replacement toaster home yet again and plugged it in yet again and I crossed my fingers and my legs and my eyes but that was really uncomfortable and I fell over when I tried to walk.
I told Grandma that if THIS toaster didn't deliver up some decent toast for a reasonable period of time I was going to take it out in the driveway and run over it with the company car and that was a solemn promise. I didn't actually sign anything but it was still a solemn promise. Grandma just smiled and patted me on the head and told me to settle down. It was a difficult time.
The toaster died a half honourable death three days after its Warranty ran out.
I know it's not the sort of thing that grownup men should do but a solemn promise is a solemn promise so I took it out into the driveway and put it down on the concrete and I fired up the Ford and I ran over that cow of a thing several times till its insides all came spewing out and its popper-upper went squealing down the road and across the park and scared the daylights out of two old ladies and a cocker spaniel.
And that's the legend of the Runover Toaster. On some dark nights, about midnight of the winter solstice, people have been known to hear the wavering moans of the popper-upper, as it roams the rocks and hills of Marino crying for Justice and the American way.
Cheers
Grandpa
© T. R. Edmonds 2001
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