James the Butler has served me well for about 30 years. He brings an element of whimsy into my home. Sometimes, if a visitor mentions his cuteness, I like to say he's the man I live with and I explain how cooperative James is. He never gives me any trouble! Often, James the Bulter holds food or drinks for guests who sit on my coach.
About a week ago, this hardworking, poor little wooden bulter fell off his stand! It's a tragedy that surprises me! At first, I couldn't figure out why. It turns out that the wooden dowels (know that "dowel" is a word I just learned, replacing "thing-of-ma-jig") weakened and deteriorated. A friend told me this is common with today's wood. Nowadays furniture is made with more inferior wood than 50 or 100 years ago. He likes to buy retro and antique furniture to get sturdier furniture that is durable.
I wondered how much it would cost to repair James. I dislike handyman work because I don't know what I'm doing and usually I don't want to learn. But! As it turns out, I can buy the wooden dowels for $5 to $15 for a bunch of different sizes. However as I tried to remove the broken dowels, they didn't pull out in one piece, and now I must locate and borrow a tool (that I hope exists) to get the remainder of the wooden dowels out of James' feet since they no longer protrude to grab onto for pulling out of the holes. If I can do this task myself it will be cheap to replace dowels and attach James back on his platform but if I must take him to a repairman, I'd have to find one, then I believe I'd be charged anywhere from $50 - $100 for the labor.
So for now, I disassembled James the Butler's wooden body from his serving tray, which unfortunately caused his arms to detach and fall off (old dowels again!), so I'm hiding him under my bed for safekeeping until I work out the details of how to make him whole again.
Meanwhile, shhh! Please do not inform the NYPD a/k/a New York's Finest about the body under my bed! I don't want a detective ringing my doorbell asking any questions. 😳
