Contributors:
Edmund Callipeaux – artist, college instructor, lives in St. Louis Park.
LeTigre – Edmund’s wife, televangelist, lives in St. Louis Park.
Eleanor Katz – Master gardener, gambler, historian, lives in St. Paul.
Kidpowertool – unemployed dairy professional, lives in Key West, FL.
Chili Pie – taconite plant floor manager, amateur arborist, lives in Rochester, MN.
Leadership 5 – woodworker, camping enthusiast, day trader, lives in Missoula, MT.
Guy Cheblo – chef, corn expert, adventurer, lives in New York, NY.
Merle Higgins – curmudgeonly outdoorsman, lives in Minneapolis.
Killdozer –University of Minnesota student, Badminton Champion, lives in Minneapolis.
M.C. RibEye – University of Minnesota student, Master of Soups and Stocks, lives in Minneapolis.
The Big D – Architect, Sage, Pirate King, lives in Minneapolis, MN.
The Midnight Dabbler – Percussionist, Milliner, Cat Rustler, lives on the North End.
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Editor’s Note: What follows are the written transcripts and artist’s storyboards from a documentary currently in production for PBS. The narrator, Donald Sutherland, walks us through a multi-perspective account of Edmund Callipeaux’s one-man private war against one old refrigerator. – KPT Narrator: In the spring of 2007, Edmund Callipeaux set out to dispose of an old refrigerator that had sat, unused for many years in the basement of Eleanor Katz’s St. Paul home.Eleanor Katz: We moved into the house in 1969 to find that the previous owners had left this old refrigerator in our basement. We never paid it any attention and thought that we’d save it in case someone we knew might want to use it at a cabin up north.
LeTigre: I was happy to see that Edmund had taken it upon himself to get that fridge out of my mom’s house. I was born in 1969 – so, in a sense, I had grown up with that thing. When my sisters and I were little, we used to pretend that the fridge was the obelisk from
2001: A Space Odyssey.
Kidpowertool: Ed called to ask me about the disposal of the fridge – he left a message on my phone. The message sounded complicated, so I decided not to call him back right away.
Chili Pie: I didn’t hear about any of this until way after Edmund had found out that it would cost him $300.00 to dispose of the beast.
Guy Cheblo: I told Eddie that I’d pay him not to mess with things he didn’t understand (e.g. mathematics, union negotiations, women, and refrigeration). ‘Call in a professional and stick to the art making!’ That’s what I said from the get-go!
Merle Higgins: I think Edmund Callipeaux is a damn fool for messing with forces that he doesn’t understand. It’s the hippy freak that resided within his core…that fridge was doing just fine sitting there for 40 or more years! It’d still be doing fine if it were sitting there today!
Killdozer: I thought that it was cool that Eddie wanted to spend a little time over at his mother-in-law’s house, pitching in a hand with this and that.
M.C. RibEye: I’m sorry that Eddie didn’t call me to help with his various efforts that he undertook at Eleanor’s that summer. I’m always up for a little danger, a little hard work, a bit of high-stakes gambling, and multiple extended lunches. (I especially specialize in the lunches.)
The Big D: I’ve known Eddie to be a resourceful guy – I never doubted that things would work out in his favor by the end. However, for extended periods during this project, it did seem like the entire natural world was conspiring against him.
Edmund Callipeaux: I’d been looking at this damn hulk of a refrigerator for years and years as it sat in my mother-in-law’s basement. The thing was about five and a half feet tall and ‘bout three feet wide and deep. It was a stout little monster that was painted some sort of white color – with rust poking through the paint in a whole bunch of hundreds of spots. Ironically, given the overall girth of its exterior, there wasn’t even enough room in its cooling chamber to fit 24 cans of beer! It was the craziest humongous/tiny refrigerator I’ve ever seen - - it was the opposite of a clown car!Leadership 5: Edmund called me over to take a look at this refrigerator. The beast had to have weighed at least 200 - 250 pounds. The thing was mostly solid machine and I quickly thought up a bunch of reasons why I wasn’t able to help him move it.
GC: Eddie called me one day while I was on holiday in Milan, Italy. He asked me if I knew anything about these old refrigerators. The phone was breaking up as he said something about people using these refrigerators at their cabins because they can be run off generators where there are no established electrical lines.
BD: Eddie called me asking about tearing the thing out and I told him that he’d better make sure that the gas lines are not still hooked up to its compressor.
KD: As Eddie himself would say, “Those gas lines could be a bit of a worry.”
CG: I told Eddie that the connection was breaking up between America and Italy. And I clicked off my phone thinking to myself, ‘I’m currently standing before the last known Michelangelo Pieta (carved about 1564), and Eddie is matching his wits against a 40+ year-old refrigerator…. I’m glad I’m me!’
MH: I told that idiot hippy freak weirdo that he better not blow up his mother-in-law’s house while he’s so busy calling everyone he knows asking advise about his precious refrigerator!
EC: Sure enough, I looked behind the fridge and the gas lines were still connected. If The Big D hadn’t told me to check, who knows what would have happened.GC: At this point, I had departed Milan for the coast and the Cinque Terre. Unfortunately, I was out of cell phone coverage on a 75-foot yacht when it hit me that Eddie’s refrigerator could possibly be still yet connected to its natural gas lines. However, there was nothing I could do from my vantage point. So, we mixed up another round of gin and tonics on the boat and hoped for the best back in America. (
Il Dolce Far Niente – as the Italians say.)
BD: Eddie has had experience with working with gas lines before, so I told him that he just needed to cap off the line and then he could remove the refrigerator from the wall.
MH: I can’t believe that he didn’t take out a whole city block trying to cap off the gas lines running to that damn refrigerator! The problem with guys like Edmund is that they’re not satisfied with the spectacularly mediocre manner of their own prescribed deaths
unless they’re taking a whole mess of innocent people with them!EC: I shut off the gas to the house, detached the refrigerator gas line from the main, and capped the pipe. It took just a few minutes. But then I looked at the monster fridge and thought, ‘What now? How the hell am I going to move this thing?’L5: So, Edmund had this beast of a fridge. He confronted it – on the plane of battle – which was the basement floor – at his mother-in-law’s house.
MR: All-out Battle!
KD: Eleanor’s house in St. Paul is built on a steep hill. So, the basement is connected to her garage, which then opens up to the sidewalk and street in front of the house.
L5: However, there are three oversized steps down from the basement proper to the garage level of the house.
EC: I knew just what to do. I shimmied that Mother back and forth, and back and forth, and over to the top of the stairs leading to the garage - and gave the freaking beast a good, old-fashioned, St. Paul – Style – Push!KD: Down it went – CRASH!
MR: Right down into the garage.
EC: It felt good.L5: Sometimes, Edmund can surprise you. He’s this little wiry guy, but he can really put his back into it when he needs to.
EK: I arrived at my home as Ed was closing the tailgate on his truck. I looked into the bed and the refrigerator was in there! I couldn’t image how he got it from the house and into his truck all by himself!
L5: Edmund has always been able to channel his adrenalin and muster up a great deal of strength on command. But it’s always at the expense of his other faculties – such as
reasoning. He cut himself three or four times on various sharp bits of the fridge and almost cracked the cement of his mother-in-law’s garage floor by pushing the fridge down the stairs.
KD: He was bleeding from three or four gashes – but the guy never pays any mind to stuff like that.
KPT: He gets tetanus shots every three years instead of ten.
EC: I just got behind the thing and pushed it through the garage and out on the street. Then, I up-ended it and pushed it over onto the tailgate of my truck. Lifting it up from its base, at the ground, I heaved it all the way into the bed of the truck!
EK: Its great weight sank the shocks of his truck all the way down the wheels.
Narrator: Edmund then drove himself and the refrigerator to a transfer refuse station near downtown St. Paul. The whole way down to the dump, he listened to a story on NPR about Space Tethers: Slinging Objects into Orbit. And he found the subject to be quite interesting.GC: He had had no problem with the gas lines or the removal of the refrigerator from the house. However, once he reached the refuse center, his story took a left turn and turned more into a saga of sorts.
BD: Eddie called me from the refuse center saying that they wanted three hundred dollars for him to dispose of the refrigerator.
EC: I was busy thinking about Space Tethering when the guy at the dump came up to the window of my truck and asked what I had in the back.KD: He asked Eddie if I knew whether or not there was ammonia in the fridge that was back there.
MH: Of course Edmund didn’t/doesn’t know a damn thing about ammonia refrigeration.
EC: I wondered why the guy at the dump would ask me such a random question regarding the refrigerator. I thought to myself, ‘There’s nothing within the chamber of the fridge…and furthermore, why would the guy ask me about cleaning supplies? And moreover, ammonia seems like an odd choice…why not ask me about 409 – or Windex?’MH: The idiot thought that the dump guy was asking him about cleaning supplies! Like I said,
they’re never happy unless they take a whole bunch of other people with them! Bang!!L5: Edmund said that the guy went onto explain that he wasn’t concerned about cleaning supplies per se, but that compressed ammonia was often used as a coolant in older refrigerators.
KD: And compressed ammonia refrigeration units are difficult and costly to dispose of properly.
EC: Opening up the tailgate of my truck, the guy said, ‘If it’s just a regular fridge then you’ve got no problem. But if it’s got an ammonia tag on it, then it’s going to cost ya plenty to leave it here with me.’MH: Like I said,
huge explosion, massive car crash, poisonous gas? Pick your calamity! Just as long as it ends up with a high body count.
EC: As this was all unfolding, I was thinking about the whole Space Tethering thing…yet perhaps if we could get enough ammonia gas going in that fridge…perhaps…?
KD: The guy told him that it would be 300 bucks to dispose of the fridge because of the ammonia gas.
MR: Sure enough, with Edmund’s luck, there was an ammonia tag near the base of the fridge. $300.00! Ouch!
Narrator: “Ouch!”EC: As I was talking to the guy at the dump, we were standing at the back of the truck, looking down at the refrigerator. He tapped with his pencil on the copper coil tubes that held the compressed ammonia.CP: Evidently, the guy told Eddie that the compressors on
these fridges are very fragile and delicate - and can break easily…causing the liquid ammonia to burst out into the open.
EC: He kept hitting the copper coil with his pencil.
MH: Take your pick:
explosions, flying daggers, cluster bombs! … Max body count!EC: As he was talking I was visualizing myself pushing the fridge down the stairs and through the garage. GC: The whole time he was pushing the fridge around, Eddie’s head was right above the compressor! He told me this over the phone while I was being fitted for an Armani suit by my favourite tailor in the shadow of the Duomo di Milano. I said, ‘Christ!’
EC: I was starting to think that perhaps I should have used some sort of tether to move the fridge.
KD: The guy at the dump told him that if the liquid ammonia had burst out and sprayed up into his eyes, he would have instantly gone blind!
MR: And if the copper pipes had broken in the house, the ammonia gas would have killed everyone in the house - because there was no ventilation!
L5: Then the guy tells him that a lot of people keep these old refrigerators because they think that someone may want it for their cabin up north. And all the while, they don’t realize that they have a ticking time bomb sitting in their basements!
MH: Like I said,
Boom! Crash! Disaster! Narrator: From the refuse center, Edmund first calls The Big D, and on his suggestion, Edmund then called the Hennepin County Recycling Hotline. GC: Eddie knows how to observe the chain-of-command.
Narrator: He’s informed that the county has a program for assisting its residents with the disposal of costly ammonia-based refrigerators. However, the person he was directed to speak to was out of the office for a long weekend. So, Edmund left a voice message describing the refrigerator and his disposal predicament.EK: Edmund arrived back at my house with the refrigerator still in the back of his truck. He told me the whole story about the guy at the dump and the ammonia and how dangerous it was to have either in the house.
L5: He couldn’t put it back into Eleanor’s house and he didn’t want to drive around the city with the fridge in the back of his truck for fear of getting into an accident and having the thing explode on I94.
EC: The fridge weighed so much in the back of the truck that the shocks were riding on the truck’s frame - and the steering of the vehicle was a bit sluggish due to the great weight on the rear tires.KD: He told me that he had basically turned his truck into the
Enola Gay and so he began to call the refrigerator
Little Boy.
LC: Eddie called me at work and told me that he couldn’t drive home for fear of the truck exploding. I had to go pick him up at my Mom’s house that night.
MH:
Bam! Ca-Plow! BOOM! 100? 200? 300 people? Guys like Edmund can’t go out alone!
Narrator: The following week, Edmund received a return phone call from a woman working with the Hennepin County Recycling Program. She informs Edmund that the county has a program that will reduce his disposal costs from $300.00 to $25.00.KPT: $300 down to $25 - - YES! Way to go Eddie!
L5: So, he’s chitchatting with the woman on the phone and he inadvertently tells her that the refrigerator is from his mother-in-law’s basement.
MH: The idiot knew instantly that he could kiss his sweet-assed discounted recycling costs goodbye.
GC: I’ve told Edmund time and time again…don’t EVER offer more information to people than they ask for. You don’t necessarily have to lie to people…but there can be a fine line between lying and only answering the question that has being asked.
EC: I knew that I had completely blown it once I said that the fridge was from Eleanor’s house. GC: The lady’s next question was, ‘Where does your mother-in-law live?’
EC: I should have known better.CP: Edmund has this thing about not lying to people. He’s told me a while back that when he was young, he used up all his Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free-Cards. So, now days he has to watch himself or the Big Man Upstairs will visit Edmund with any number of immeasurably heinous punishments.
EC: So, when the woman asked me where Eleanor lived, I had to tell her: St. Paul. MR: She said, “Oh.”
KD: I heard Eddie tell this story at a party once. At this point, he tells the county worker that the refrigerator is from a house in St. Paul (which is part of Ramsey County) instead of lying and telling her that it’s from his own house (which would put the fridge squarely in Hennepin County). Eddie says that an extreme silence followed as he (a) instantly realized that the recycling program only applied to
Hennepin County residents and then (b) his brain began to chant the word
STUPID as it also began to visualize Eddie holding a Puffer Fish in his left hand, striking, in quick succession, blow-by-blow, with the bloated fish - covering his naked body with thousands upon thousands of little puncture wounds.
EC: The silence on the other end of the phone was excruciating…I instantly knew what I had done to myself.EK: Well, the county worker told Edmund that the discounted price for recycling was only available to Hennepin County residents. So, he saw his disposal costs go from $300 down to $25 and then right back up to $300 in a matter of seconds!
MH: That idiot. Never tell nobody working for the government anything more than you have to. The fool got what he deserved.
Narrator: Edmund thanked the woman on the phone for her time and hung up the phone thinking, “$275.00 – that’s a plane ticket to New York. Yep, a plane ticket to New York. Hell! That’s a plane ticket to New York!”EC: I got off the phone and sat back into my chair to consider my situation. Looking out the window and into the backyard, I saw a little red squirrel and I thought, ‘He’s not tethered to anything.’ But then I saw him totally attack a grey squirrel at least twice his size. And I thought, ‘Yes! Yes! I must be fearless like that stupid little red squirrel. The Stupid Brand of Fearlessness!’MR: Embrace these ideals and they will serve you well.
GC: The Hennepin County worker had given Eddie the telephone number to a local recycler on the south side of St. Paul that specialized in handling ammonia-based refrigerators.
MH: I told the bastard that he should just dump the thing out the back of his truck on the intersection of Franklin and Chicago, in Minneapolis. But he wouldn’t go for that!
KD: I die laughing every time I think of Edmund telling us about how he had that puffer fish in one hand while he’s holding an imaginary phone to his ear with his free hand. He was like, “Oh, yes. I’m sorry, I didn’t know that the subsidized program was only for Hennepin County residents.” All the while, as he tells the story, he’s got his fingers extended like he’s palming and imaginary basketball, miming a puffer-flagellation that would make any of those hair shirt guys seem like a bunch of pikers.
MH: What a jerk.
MR: I was like, “Dude, that’s a lot of money. Just think how many Pennywhistles and Moon Pies you could get for $300.00.”
KD: Puffer fish? That would be painful!
CP: So, Edmund gets off the phone with the county worker and decides to call the other number that she had given him right away.
EC: I thought to myself, ‘I’m in some weird underworld of recycling. I’d better use extra caution.’EK: So, Edmund calls the recycler in South St. Paul.
MH: The idiot gets somewhat of a reprieve…the woman on the other end of the phone tells him that they can dispose of the fridge for $160.00.
EC: I thought, ‘Hmmm, one-sixty is better than three hundred. But that’s still a lot of Moon Pies.’
EK: Then Edmund says to me that the woman asked him if the name brand of the refrigerator was
Servel.
GC: Evidently, Edmund had no idea what its brand name was, but after taking such a beating from Hennepin County, he decided to take his chances and replied to the lady, ‘
Yes. Yes, the refrigerator IS a Servel.’
EC: I didn’t have the refrigerator with me because it was still in my truck as it was parked outside at my mother-in-law’s house. And I wasn’t able to get over there until the following day.CP: He said that the woman told him that the Servel Corporation had a program that subsidized the recycling costs of their old ammonia refrigerators…and she gave Edmund a contact number to call.
MH: The idiot has no clue about anything. It drives me crazy how he’s down 300 then up 25 and then down again, and up again - all the while, he’s blowing in the wind of his own dumb luck. It’s maddening.
GC: Eddie has a unique take on life. He knows that nothing stays the same for very long. So, sometimes the solution for this or that is just a matter of waiting and letting a little time change things around a bit.
KD: The money, the puffer fish, the ammonia, the various counties, and now some corporation to deal with. That Edmund guy is like Jacques Cousteau – getting the job done despite killer fish, hazardous elements, and The MAN breathing down his neck!
MR: So, he calls the Servel Corporation and they ask him for his address and tell him that they’ll send out the proper forms for him to fill out.
EC: It was too, too easy. L5: He hardly had to say that he was in mere possession of the fridge and the woman on the other end of the line commanded him to give her his address.
EC: She was really rude to me too! What’s with that?! And she didn’t have to look anything up, or ask her manager about anything, or put me on hold for and hour, or nothing. Her response was instantaneous! It was weird…she knew exactly what I wanted without me having to say hardly anything. Plus, she was mean to me about it.GC: Eddie’s Mid-Western sensibilities were slightly bruised by the discourteous tone of the Servel woman as she collected his contact information and told him not to call back.
KPT: She told Edmund that he could expect the forms in six to eight weeks and for him not to call back with any further inquiries.
EC: I thought that whole exchange was strange and it freaked me out a little: (1) she instantly knew exactly what I was talking about and (2) she told me to never call back!
L5: That is a bit of a strange request.
MH: Edmund is a freak!
MR: With Edmund’s imagination, he started getting himself all worked up. It’s his way.
L5: He dreamt up a variety of scenarios concerning what the Servel Corporation was going to do with his personal information.
KPT: My favorite of Edmund’s delusions around this time was how now that Servel had his name and address, they were going to be monitoring his each and every move. And if he tried to call them back - it would activate some secret agent thing where the corporation would show up at his house and take him out.
CP: His paranoia was made worse upon going on-line to the Servel Corporation website. He found out that Servel is some sort of huge conglomerate based out of India that sells boating and airplane parts.
EC: I saw the website! What the heck! Aeronautical equipment AND nautical equipment! What the hell did that have to do with my mother-in-law’s old refrigerator?KD: He was freaking out.
KPT: Edmund thought that they were going to take him away and erase his mind and turn him into a trained assassin. Then he’d spend the rest of his days trying to live a normal life despite being activated by his handler on a regular basis and sent to New Orleans or somewhere to shoot someone.
MH: I said to Edmund, ‘
What part of no one gives a damn about anything you do don’t you understand? And besides, the only people who become assassins like that are junkies with no families who knock over convenience stores.
Narrator: Edmund waited ten weeks for the paperwork from the Servel Corporation to arrive. And he did call them back again and they were rude to him again and told him not to call back again. And despite his fears and hopes, he was never turned into an assassin.EC: Coincidently, the paperwork for the refrigerator arrived at my house not three days after I called Servel after the tenth week had passed (and they were rude to me again).MD: Edmund called me to see if he could store this refrigerator in our garage for a few weeks until he got this paperwork that he was waiting for from the corporation. We agreed to let him use the garage, as it was the only option we had storing the monster fridge in an area that is not directly attached to a house. Evidently, if the ammonia leaks out of the compressor, it’ll kill anyone nearby in an enclosed place.
EC: I couldn’t leave the time bomb refrigerator in the back of my truck. And I couldn’t put it in my garage, or bring back to Eleanor’s - because both are attached to each of our houses. I figured that if the damn thing were in The Midnight Dabbler’s garage, he and LadyPodTron would smell the ammonia before they opened the door (if the thing ever blew).LC: I told Edmund to figure out something, because we couldn’t drive around in the
Enola Gay for the next several months.
KPT: Luckily, it worked out that they could store the fridge in the Midnight Dabbler and LadyPodTron’s garage.
Narrator: The refrigerator sat, wrapped in a plastic drop cloth for several weeks, in the garage.GC: When Edmund finally received his paperwork from Servel in the mail, he loaded everything up and shuttled the beastly old refrigerator down to a South St. Paul recycling outfit.
KD: His costs had gone from $300.00 to $25.00, back up to $300.00, down to $160.00 and now down to Zero.
MH: I hate Edmund Callipeaux.
KPT: And it gets better!
GC: When Edmund got down to the South St. Paul recycler, he filled out all the forms he was given. With a little dance and a hop, he finally bid the Servel refrigerator goodbye.
L5: The people at the recycling center had to verify everything and fill out a mess of forms themselves – all of which were then mailed back to the Servel Corporation with receipts and photocopies, and a bunch of other stuff, etc.
MR: Edmund had to write a check for $160.00 to put up for the recycling costs - then the Servel Corporation promised to reimburse him.
CP: At the very end of all the forms, it explained that after Edmund paid upfront and submitted the completed paperwork, he would be reimbursed.
KPT: That piece of paper said for him to allow 16 – 20 weeks to receive his reimbursement check in the mail.
GC: DANG!
EC: I thought, ‘Sixteen to twenty weeks…what the?’Narrator: Edmund waited his twenty weeks. The project of disposing of his mother-in-law’s refrigerator ended in late November as it had begun in early April of that year: with yet another surprise!LC: I checked our mail one afternoon near Thanksgiving Time and there was a letter addressed to Edmund from the Servel Corporation.
KPT: Edmund opened the envelope and within, there was a check for $275.00!
EK: $275.00.
GC: After all that, he pocketed a cool 115 bucks after expenses!
KD: 115 – free and clear!
CP: If I were to ever wear a hat, I’d take it off to the guy! Word, instead!
MR: That’s a lot of Moon Pies and Pennywhistles.
MH: That’s a little less than 9¢ per hour from April to November.
EC: That’s E-Z CA$H!EC: That’s what I’m talking about!
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