Open that icebox and the memories begin to thaw

Sometimes it feels as if my wife and I are living in the olden days.

I realize, of course, we’re 20 years into the 21st century and that many decades have marched by since modern kitchen devices like dishwashers and refrigerators have become commonplace.

Still, there we were, standing side by side at the sink trying to decide what to do with a plate of three-week-old meatloaf, mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables.

Clearly, it had all gone bad.

There was a kind of a greenish-black mold growing on the meatloaf, and the potatoes carried the nasty funk of sour milk.

“They could probably be saved,” my wife said, covering her nose and pointing at the congealed corn-pea-carrot conglomeration huddled along the edge.

“Maybe,” I said, popping a pea into my mouth. “But what’s the point? The whole thing is a Petri dish of disease and probably way more dangerous than the coronavirus.”

“OK,” she said. “You want to dump it in the woods or should I?”

Let’s pause the home movie for a minute or so and let that soak in.

It’s a modern kitchen by our standards, anyway, keeping in mind that before we left for Carolina, the house we shared was built in 1901, which meant it was nearly 100 years old when we moved out.

It relied on a temperamental — some might call it sadistic — furnace to keep us warm during a decade’s worth of criminally cold Ohio winters, but that also meant I was always cooking with gas, which I’ve found is far superior to the electric stove I use now.

Her dad and I grew used to playing pilot-light ping-pong with him in the basement with a book of matches and me in the kitchen listening to the Black Crowes because, well, it went out all the time.

It was a two-man job. Two things had to happen simultaneously.

“OK, Clarence,” I’d yell down the cellar steps, “go ahead.”

“OK, Mike,” he’d say, “you should have a spark.”

It was the same thing whenever a bat flew into the house, which was as drafty and full of holes as a Rebel soldier’s skivvies at Spotsylvania or Antietam.

He was in charge of securing the perimeter while I wielded a fisherman’s net while wearing kitchen mitts since, after all those years in the stalking game, I knew that bats bit.

Speaking of kitchens and to steer us slowly back to the rank and rotten leftovers that confronted my wife and me recently, allow me the opportunity to write a few words about a lost American icon.

I refer, of course, to the icebox.

That’s usually what Mom called it in the mid-’60s and early-’70s.

Oh, she might deviate from her Depression-era 1930s vocabulary choice every now and again — mostly when she and Dad were hosting Bridge Night — but she used the word “refrigerator” a lot less frequently than any word in her extensive English-major lexicon, with the possible exception of the word “yes.”

As in, “Mom, I’ve got a chance to see the Rolling Stones this summer. May I go, please?”

“Yes” wasn’t what my mother said as she reached deep into the icebox for a frozen chicken.

“No,” she said. “And grab that bag of tater tots. And set the table. And feed the dog. And make the National Honor Society. And get into a good college. And find a nice girl who can stand you. As if.”

Well, I exaggerate. On some maternal level, even when I was 17 and full of spit and vestigial anger, Mom must have loved me. Why else would she prepare liver and bacon every other Tuesday?

Never with onions, though. My father couldn’t abide them, much the way the very idea of a harvest gold or avocado green refrigerator triggered in him the same visceral response he had when one of us dared bring up the topic of maybe, perhaps, someday soon — “Please, Dad!” — getting a color television.

That was a nonstarter, so we stayed a monochrome family, and as you might surmise, the icebox was always a dull and boring white with zero modern features and it required regular defrosting using pans of boiling water and bathroom towels lining the kitchen floor.

Which brings us back to the place where I left the original story, with my wife and me staring at a disgusting plate of my meatloaf leftovers, trying to decide the best way to bury the evidence.

“So you’ll take it to the woods?” she asked, knowing from long experience that by morning the forest animals that haunt the back yard at night would have removed every trace of that rancid food.

“No,” I said. “Let’s use the garbage disposal. We haven’t tried it in years. Maybe this time it won’t, you know, explode.”

I think my decision spared the coyotes and raccoons a lot of pain.

And that, for so many folks, has become a focal point of living.

We’re just tired of the needless discomfort everyday life inflicts on us, whether it’s trying to do something simple — like canceling a credit card after some lowlife has stolen your online identity — or something far more complicated.

I refer to dealing with the cable TV people. No help there at all.

And I’m sure there are a lot of you out there thinking to yourselves, “What’s wrong with this guy? I cut the cable back before Obama.”

But I’m old school. I still use my original AOL email address. I prefer a turntable to multi-disc CD changers. I’ll watch a VCR tape before I wrestle with the director’s cut DVD of “Almost Famous.”

I like things I know I can use. The idea of juggling three or four remote controls just to make sure the sound is on during a baseball playoff game fills me with dread and a desire to maim.

But when my wife talked me into buying a flat-screen TV, one that bypassed the whole cable debacle, I went for the bait. Fast forward three weeks and I’ve made a mockery of myself as a modern man.

The stretched-out faces move, but the words coming out of their mouths lag by 10 seconds. The action on the field exists in a similar time warp. There’s no access to CBS, NBC or ABC, but if you want six Hallmark channels or 10 Home Shopping outlets, you’re golden. I’ve tried but failed to figure it out, and I’m tired.

I think I understand better why my parents tried to shield me from the next shiny, new toy that came down the pike. They were smart.

Thankfully, I can still reach into the icebox and dull the pain.