Johnny Nash and the Kenmore Clean-up…

Johnny-on-the-Spot … John Foster …

A few days ago my wife uttered she’s like to get the refrigerator cleaned out and also clean the windows.

Somehow that stuck in my mind so one morning while I was “brunching”, I said, “Let ‘s clean the fridge. I’ll clean if you make the call on what needs to be tossed”.

The project was underway.

First off, it wasn’t one of those projects where we found a Cool Whip container with a pulse.

We did encounter some food stuffs that might have been eligible for the “Salad Dressing Hall of Fame”, based on the “Best-if-used by” dates.

There was a time before everything was stamped with those dates, you’d have to “peak and sniff” mystery food containers discovered in the far reaches of the refrigerator.

I remember back in the mid 50’s, our family had a white Westinghouse refrigerator with a push-button on the left front side of the door to open the appliance.

Pretty high-tech for the time.

That was the unit that housed the Neapolitan ice cream.

The German name for Neapolitan ice cream is “Furst-Puckler-Eis”.

The ice cream came to America in the 1860’s from the city of Naples and those 3 flavors were molded together to resemble the Italian flag.

We kids would quickly devour the chocolate third, then the vanilla, leaving the strawberry portion to turn white with frost.

It’s funny now because I actually prefer strawberry over the other two flavors.

Our refrigerator-cleaning resulted in a sizeable increase of glass and plastic container recyclables while feeding the disposal tasty morsels, generally devoid of mold spores.

Every basket, drawer and shelf was removed and given a bath in warm, soapy water before being dried and re-installed.

With the crud removed from the glass shelves and inner doors, the unit seems to sparkle and there seemed to be a lot more room.

Two days later, my wife suggested we take advantage of the October warm spell and clean the windows.

I first attacked from the outside with the hose, a bucket of soapy water and my trusty scrub brush to disturb the spiders and bugs hiding there.

Then we grabbed our trusty Norwex cleaning and drying rags and went to work, removing the stuff that obscured our view.

With these new-fangled tilt-in windows, it’s a pretty quick and simple two-man chore for a frisky hubby and wife to complete.

Actually, the toughest part of window cleaning is moving the furniture to allow access to the windows.

It sure brightened up the interior.

I caught myself humming a little Johnny Nash.

“It’s gonna be a bright (bright)

Bright (bright) sunshiny day.

Look all around, there’s nothing but blue skies.

Look straight ahead, there’s nothing but blue skies.”

But wouldn’t you know it.

In one of the driest autumns on record, the next day it rain.

But raindrops even look better on clean windows.