Bye Bye to the 1952 Thermador Oven

The 1952 Thermador oven. Can you believe how contemporary it looks? That's my pal Fred the Electrician, measuring the Thermador for her replacement.

Just a quick note as I have to schlep over to a large Hardware Diaspora to switch the electrical cord for my dryer (three prong) for the correct cord (four prong): another in a series of errors perpetrated by the folks at HD, who have only one solution for everything: "Just come on back to the store and we will exchange that for you." (Fortunately, I have nothing else to do.)

Anyway, the oven that has served my family's home since before it was my family's home, has finally gone the way of all things made by man: it has done gone and been replaced.

The Thermador fit into this cabinet that was slightly under 24" wide, which left us few options on the replacement side. BTW, look at how she was connected: no plug, just a pigtail of wires. That must have been code in 1952, when the house was built. Good thing we didn't set the house on fire, lo these fifty years of dinners.

But it still worked well enough for us to cook a turkey in it for my mother's funeral reception in December. And in March, for my father's funeral reception, my sister stayed at the house and used the old Thermador to cook the food that fed her family. The temperature gauge wasn't correct and the clock had stopped working about twenty years hence, but we did get good service from her since my mother and father bought the home that contained her in 1959.

In her place: the expensive German secret weapon. The Vengeance Oven. We fought them to make the world free for democracy and now we pay them to build our ... ovens, of all things.

It took two men to install it. Fred the Electrician and Raul his helper. Raul seems to have used some form of magic spell on the thing when he took it out of the box, which I managed to catch with my camera.

Actually, I think Raul was just removing the wrapping from the oven's handle, but at this point in my life, an oven with a magic spell has a definite appeal.

All these appliances are going to be far more energy efficient than the old ones, at least that is what the paperwork says. And we are supposed to get a tax rebate on most of them, so that should at least pay for, say, the handle on the der Ofen.

I suppose now is as good a time as any to admit that this fancy appliance is a Miele. I chose GE for the rest, because I've always thought GE appliances were so gemütliche. And they cost so many less marks than the Broiler from Berlin.

The fix is in. Now I'll have to learn do something with my oven, other than use it to store my shoes.

The Thermador looking forlorn in Fort Chapman's driveway. What a hip-looking appliance she was. And you could fit a lot of shoeboxes in her interior.

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