The Gremlin Manifestation

Maybe there really is a gremlin around here.

My Jeep has a Vehicle Information Center – VIC for short. It’s a small display located between the dashboard and driveshaft hump. It tells me when to change the oil, tells me when a door is ajar, tells me when an exterior light bulb is burned out, and so on. Last week, the VIC decided that the driver’s door is always open, even when the door is solidly closed. When I drive the Jeep now, the VIC flashes a warning at me and beeps to make sure I notice it.

Then on Sunday, the picture on my big-screen TV started flickering like a strobe light. (This is the same TV set I repaired two years ago.) The screen flickered for a few seconds and then went dark, and an acrid smell filled the room. It was the unmistakable odor of toasted electronics.

But I think the gremlin has moved on. The heating oil truck came to my house today to deliver #2 heating oil to my storage tank. I always talk to the drivers while they’re pumping oil into my tank. Sometimes they have interesting tales to tell. Today the driver told me what he had experienced a few minutes earlier in another part of town.

As he drove up a street looking for the delivery address, he saw what he thought was someone burning leaves. That would be a crazy thing to do. The day was moderately breezy and the burning leaves were blowing down the street and setting other fires. Also, burning leaves is not necessary; all a resident has to do is rake his leaves to the gutter, and the city will dispose of them.

But as he got closer, he realized no one was burning leaves. A large delivery van, taller than his fuel oil truck, had come along and, unbeknownst to its driver, had snagged an overhead power line. The power line pulled taut, then snapped, and one end fell into a yard where electrical sparks set fire to grass and leaves in the yard. Then the truck turned a corner and the line it was still dragging snagged a corner of a roof and tore off shingles. At that point the driver realized something was wrong. He stopped and got his fire extinguisher and began trying to put out the grass fire. Electric power in the neighborhood was knocked out, and the fire department got involved. The oil truck driver said he was about to get out and help fight the grass fire, but then he thought it might not be a good idea to leave his fuel oil truck parked where a fire was in progress.

For the owner of the house that lost shingles, it was insult added to injury. The previous week a teenage girl driving on his street had gotten distracted while texting on her phone and drove her car off the road and into the side of his house.

Someone please feed the gremlin so it will go away.