A Visit From Handy Manny?

Posted by Lorren on July 19, 2010

Most of today was your typical Sunday. Woke up, went to church, came home, ate, slept, went to church again. When we came back, things were a little different. You never know when the unexpected will happen. We had no power.

Dh called the power company; evidently there was a transformer that needed to be replaced. The power was going to come back on in about an hour and a half. So we decided to go to Jack in the Box for dinner rather than try to fix dinner in our dark, hot house (it was over 103 outside at the time).

I called grandma from Jack to wish her happy 80th birthday. We had dinner, stopped by Wal-Mart, and then went home. Our neighbors had power, but we still didn’t. The power was back at the electric box, but not in our house.

So we called maintenance. Handy Manny’s older twin brother came by. He tried turning on and off the breaker (we already tried that). Then he said that he had to come back with something else.

Handy Manny’s brother came back with a hammer. Tapping on the electric box, he says “hola!” Like that’s going to get the electricity going again. After hammering our breaker box for a bit, he said that he was going to get his friend. It’s about midnight, and I’m wondering if we can get someone competent to fix this thing.

A short time later, Handy Manny’s brother came back with a guy dressed in ASU clothes; probably a college student. He had some electric tools at least. He did some measuring, and then he tapped on our electric box with a hammer. This time, the electricity flickered a bit. He tapped it again, and the power came on.

Evidently, in these super-old houses that we live in here, dust gathers in the breaker box. By tapping on the breaker with a hammer, it shook the dust loose, and the power came on again.

So if you live in a really old house and the power goes out, you might want to tap the breaker box before calling an electrician