Kathy Roussos knows perfectly well that she could purchase a new radio for her bedroom and a new little yellow cement mixer for her precious grandson — but perish the thought!
“They don’t make them like that anymore,” she grumbled about both broken treasures, which she brought to a recent Thursday night Repair Cafe hosted by Ace Hardware in Hazel Dell and staged by Columbia Springs Environmental Education Center.
The AM-FM was a gift to Roussos’ mother something like 30 years ago, she said, but recently it’s sprouted static and is tough to tune. Fixer Mike Farabee got busy opening up the little brown cabinet while Roussos said she loves listening to the golden oldies. (They don’t make those like they used to, either.)
“Isn’t it a shame, there’s no repair shop in town anymore,” she said. “Everything they make these days is an inexpensive throwaway.”
Nearby, Deborah Portukalian was removing the screws from an old food dehydrator with a frayed power cord — also inherited from her mother, she said. That didn’t seem so long ago, Portukalian said, but when she thought about it she realized: “Wow, it’s been a long time.” Does that make the dehydrator a sentimental heirloom? Yes and no, she said: “It’s done a lot of work for us, but if it goes, it goes.”
But volunteer fixer Larry Juday had no problem installing the replacement cord Portukalian had brought with her. Portukalian left the Repair Cafe flashing thumbs-up and ready to preserve more food.
Skills and needs
In all, 31 skilled volunteers labored to repair gadgets, garments, toys and tools lugged to Ace Hardware on Aug. 9 by an impressive 130 people, according to Erik Horngren, whose job at Columbia Springs Environmental Education Center became full-time Repair Cafe coordinator last year, when the nonprofit agency won a project grant from the state Department of Ecology.
“It’s definitely different than the other work we do, most of which is nature-focused and about bringing people to our site to explore and appreciate the outdoors,” said Horngren. But Repair Cafes fit into the larger Columbia Springs missions of conserving natural resources and reducing landfill waste, he said — not to mention connecting people and sharing skills.
“We’re an education center. A lot of people are very engaged in the repairs and want to know what’s happening so they can handle it in the future themselves,” Horngren said.
Repair Cafes are growing quickly, Horngren added. Last year there were four events, but Columbia Springs is holding eight in 2018 and likely more in 2019, he said. The final two Repair Cafes for this year are set for Sept. 15 at the Camas Public Library and Oct. 23 at the Battle Ground Community Center.
The next strategic move will be to schedule more Repair Cafes in lower-income and rural neighborhoods, Horngren said, where the need is greatest. Volunteer Betty Sue Brewster, a master seamstress and veteran of several Repair Cafes, said she’s aware that some folks who bring in clothing, sleeping bags or backpacks possess little else — and she’s glad to help.
“I just love the whole concept of not throwing things away, of saving the environment and saving money,” she said.
Brewster and her friend Carol Frana were stationed behind a pair of electric sewing machines, but both said they learned on foot-powered trundle machines — Brewster from her mother and Frana from her father. “Dad was a mechanic in World War II and he loved machines,” Frana remembered. “Mom was busy.”
Sentiment and risk
Patty and David Page were there — David with a beard trimmer that kept popping apart, Patty with a pressure washer that had lost its oomph. Sentimental value? Not much. Well, David reconsidered, he was inspired to buy the beard trimmer after a memorable overseas trip where his beard got a great makeover, so that’s a nice connected memory. But when the trimmer turned out to be a goner, Page shrugged it off.
Meanwhile, his wife Patty Page was developing deep admiration for her fixer, James Richardson, a retired avionics technician for U.S. Airways, who reached into his stash of vintage airplane tools and retrieved a specialized one called a spine wrench, which turned out to be the perfect fit for the funny little screws in Page’s pressure washer. Page got on the phone to tell her son, who’d advised her about getting the appliance fixed: “He’s using a wrench he used to use on (Boeing) 737s!”
But all was not airworthy yet; Richardson took a look at the washer guts and warned Page that he might well cause more damage. “They build it that way so you’ve got to go buy a new pressure washer,” he said. But Page told him to go for the glory with a “Woo!” — and then, when Richardson rigged up a fix by bypassing the hand-squeeze trigger on the thing, she “Woo-hoo!”ed even louder.
Chuck and Sandra Bristol brought in a darkened standing lamp that’s around a century old and once belonged to Chuck’s parents. They presented it to Dick Hamlet, who called it “a beauty” and appreciated the new parts and switches the Bristols had brought along. Hamlet and Chuck Bristol worked together to take the lamp apart and rewire everything.
“It was in our living room. It’s always been there when I’ve been there,” Chuck Bristol said.
And it will be again, because after some focused effort, the light came alive again. “I fix lights. That’s what I do,” said Hamlet, a retired software engineer and faculty member at Portland State University. “It’s a nice volunteer activity.”
A couple tables over, fixer Matt Slade was sizing up a battery-powered Big Bird from the 1980s. The beak is supposed to move while a cassette tape plays and children read along with a storybook, but recently Big Bird has gone still, disappointed grandmother Kay Gin told him.
“Big Bird needs to talk,” Slade agreed. “He’s a classic. I’m jealous.” But after a little exploratory surgery, Slade told Gin that he was reluctant to take apart the whole mechanism, which would take hours and the right replacement parts: “He’s a collectible and definitely worth repairing, but not by me.”
“Big Bird needs a specialist,” Gin realized as Slade jotted down a referral.
‘My hero!’
Cooling fans of all sorts — large, small, rotating, floor-standing, window-box — were a popular object at this heat-wave event; also carried in and out were dull blades (lawnmower and kitchen knife) and a completely splintered, wooden garden shovel; bicycles and scooters; food processors and all descriptions of kitchen gadgets; frayed clothing items and other textiles; battery and kid-powered toys; and many electrical appliances and lamps that have gone dark, silent and still.
“I can fix anything, but not when it’s electrical,” said Jamie Towers of Hazel Dell, who rewarded Slade’s successful restoration of light to her standing lamp with a “My hero!”
The most unique object The Columbian noticed at the Repair Cafe was a large Quran with an electronic reader-pen that contains a laser; you’re supposed to move the pen along the lines of text and listen to it talk. But the pen has gone quiet, according to Vancouver newcomer Reema Khasawinah.
Fixer Slade took a good look and said he was 80 percent sure that all Khasawinah needed was a cotton swab or blast of compressed air to clear the laser, and she’d be listening in again while her pen did the work. Khasawinah went away happy.
And so did Kathy Roussos, the granny with the radio and toy cement mixer. Fixer Mike Farabee couldn’t help with her static-plagued radio, unfortunately, but he wrote down the name of the part she needed — a variable resistor — and Roussos said she was determined to go get one and get the repair done. This is the radio she’s sticking with, she insisted. Then she went back to a table labeled “Misfit toys” to collect her little yellow cement mixer, which was roadworthy again after fixer Annie Jackson’s tiny dab of epoxy on one plastic wheel.
“It’s one of my grandson’s favorite toys,” Roussos said triumphally.
