The Prairie Spy

Alan “Lindy” Linda

“Listen, Lady Kenmore, I have here an official Appliance Bureau of Investigation warrant to search you for hidden information regarding your dalliance with Dave Lennox the Furnace!”

Lady Kenmore the Dryer giggled at me and said something about me being silly because I’m never getting under her skirts. Search warrant or no search warrant.

“Well,” I replied, “you were right, but now we’ve found that Dave may have had connections with an underground movement to deny the results of the last presidential election.” I went on to list her movements ever since that January 6th uproar in Washington, D.C. And it appears that, if she wasn’t actually there, Dave was, and so, as we know, you’re just as guilty by association–by political rules, anyway.  Plus, since Dave Lennox was actually inside the building, he may have run off with classified documents. Even nuclear secrets. And LK being so gullible, she may have agreed to hide them for him.

“Oh, no, you don’t!” said LK. “I had nothing to do with any of that.” She said that Dave would vouch for her. Well, that won’t work, I told her, since there are cell phone pictures of him pointing his fan at the police there. So his word isn’t worth much.

I repeated to LK: “I need to inspect you.” She’s not only ticklish, but she has the strict prudishment of a post-Victorian spinster, and won’t even bare her adjustable feet, much less anything else.

I could see the reality of all this hit her. “Oh, oh, oh,” she uttered, and at that, her LED lights fluttered, and she passed out. That was good for me, and I immediately began lifting her front skirt, but then I remembered that to lift her front skirt, first I had to peel back her top.

I was doing that when she came back to consciousness. When she realized I was on top of her, trying to hold her front cover out while also yanking up her top. She freaked out!  “Help! Help!” shreiked Lady Kenmore, “I’m being sexually assaulted!” At which point, thank goodness, she fainted again.

I immediately saw that to fully inspect her for hidden classified documents, I would have to also release her belt and pull her belly out far enough to look behind it. Any of you reading this that have tried to do all these three things at once with a dryer knows how difficult this operation is.

Should Lady Kenmore come back to consciousness at this point, the sharp edges of her sheet metal skirts could slice my fingers just about off.

About now, General Electric the Washing Machine got into the fray, due to some misguided belief that it was up to him to protect the weaker sex. “Hey!” he shouted, “what are you doing to her?”

True, at first glance, it did seem that I was up to no good, laying across Lady Kenmore like I was, grunting with the effort of holding stuff, like I was. I no longer wondered why agents of the Appliance Bureau of Investigation retired early. We were under orders not to discuss our reasons for doing what we do, and here was GE right next to me, lashing me with his water hoses, thinking I was doing something just not right to LK.

I tell you, the next several minutes are impossible to describe to you, what with the rules of law that restrict what I can tell you, and the limits of propriety that prevent me from putting into print the awfulness of what GE was accusing me of.

To make a long story short, just about then, LK came back to life, and just as I realized that there was nothing wrong behind her belly, her belt snapped in two, and she began squirming and squealing and carrying on something fierce. GE got me a lick or two with his cold water hose. Things were looking bad, when suddenly, everything went dark.LK and GE stopped their assault on me. All the lights down in the basement went out.

Elvis the Electrical System said: “I thought maybe you would be better off if I shut the power down.” 

Huh. I was fumbling for my pocket flashlight, trying to extricate myself from LK’s sheet metal clothing without slashing myself. I finally stood up. “Thank you,Elvis,” I said to him. “It was getting dicey there.”

I now have parts ordered for LK. GE seems to have settled down. Maybe everything will go back to some kind of normal.

I remember when life was kind of, well, boring. I also remember wishing it would pick up a bit.

I no longer think that was a good wish.