Summer at Fraser’s Mill

The Great Thaw

T he suggestion box proved helpful, and the Murrays began working on some of the town’s ideas right away. Dad ordered some pre-made salads and sandwiches to carry in the store. Grace and Mom spent a whole evening making cookies and raspberry bars. (Doc had offered to bake with them, but he got called away to help a kid who had gotten hurt falling out of a tree.)

Grace opened the store on Monday. Before things got too busy, she wanted to look at the new suggestions people had put in the box over the last few days. She had brought a notebook and pen with her so she could brainstorm ideas.

The suggestion box was a shoebox, covered in wrapping paper, with a slot in the top. Grace opened it and found half a dozen folded papers. She unfolded the first one.

“Suggestion,” it read in large letters. “The store ought to have apple crisp more often. But don’t burn your hand making it!”

It was easy to guess who had written that. Grace shoved Doc’s note into her pocket and went on to the next one.

She was brainstorming a way to serve fresh coffee in the store without taking too much time or costing too much money when Elaine Keller approached the counter.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think there’s something wrong with your freezer,” she said. “Everything’s much warmer than it should be. Look at this ice cream.”

She held out a carton to Grace. The carton was warm and soft, and Grace could tell even before she opened it that the ice cream inside was melted.

“Oh, no. Is it all like this?”

“I’m afraid so,” Elaine said.

Grace set the carton on the counter with a thump and hurried over to the rest of the ice cream, kept in one of the store’s three-door freezers.

She opened the door. It was suspiciously warm inside. Oh, no. All that food! It must have been thawing for a long time. They probably wouldn’t be able to salvage anything. It would cost hundreds of dollars to replace all the product.

Were all three of the freezers like that? Grace whisked to the next freezer. A blast of cold air greeted her. It must be just the one.

Maybe it wasn’t actually broken. Maybe it had come unplugged or blown a fuse. Grace called her parents.

“Well, howdy, Gracie,” Dad said on the other end of the line. “What’s going on?”

“Dad, the ice cream freezer isn’t working! Everything inside is completely melted!”

“Oh, no. I’ll be right down.”

After investigating the broken freezer, the two working freezers, and the circuit breaker box, Dad eliminated the possibility of a power supply problem. There must be something wrong with the freezer itself.

Dad called an appliance repairman he knew in Cadillac. The man said he was booked solid all day, but he’d drop in as a favor after his last house call.

In the meantime, they had to deal with all the food that had defrosted. Besides the ice cream, the freezer held frozen fruit.

“I know we can’t sell it,” Grace said, surveying the food in the freezer, “but could we eat any of it ourselves?”

Bags of strawberries, blueberries, peaches, and raspberries were all defrosted. Dad surveyed them, stroking his chin.

“Guess it depends how long it’s been,” he said. “I wish I knew when the freezer stopped working. Why don’t you ask your mother?”

Mom was dubious when confronted with several bags of mushy defrosted fruit. “Rats. I don’t know,” she said. “I heard if it still has ice crystals in it, it’s okay to refreeze. But I’m not seeing any ice crystals in this stuff. Who knows how long it was sitting there?”

“Well, it’s still cold,” Grace said. “It’s like somebody defrosted it in the fridge.”

“Hmm,” Mom said. “I’ll see if it tastes all right, and if it does, I’ll bake it into something. I’m certainly not going to serve it plain.”

The ice cream was a total loss. The store stocked a lot of ice cream in the summer, and losing it all at once was a blow. A large percentage of it was local ice cream from a nearby dairy farm. Grace had to go back and forth to the dumpster throwing it out, and by the time she had finished, angry tears stood in her eyes. Why did this have to happen? Hundreds of dollars gone, just because the freezer decided to quit.

And it had to happen just as Grace was trying to improve the store. What would the townspeople think when they came in and couldn’t get ice cream or frozen fruit? Grace hoped the freezer could be fixed quickly so the Murrays could restock.

The repairman dealt a blow when he came. “Sorry, Ben,” he told Dad. “Fixing that thing wouldn’t be worth it. It’s so old something else would probably break right away. If you take my advice you’ll find a used one on Craigslist or eBay.”

Dad sighed. “I was afraid of that. That freezer was over twenty years old. We got the others around the same time. I hope they’re not gonna give out on us too.”

The repairman shook his head. “It’s too bad,” he said. “Look at it this way: it lasted a long time before it broke. They did a good job making those old freezers. The modern ones break when you look at them.”

Over dinner, Grace and her parents discussed their options.

“We can’t get a brand new freezer,” Dad said. “Too expensive. Even a used one is probably too much. We don’t have a lot of extra cash after all those doctor bills, and we can’t get anything for the old freezer.”

“Won’t the scrap metal people take the freezer?” Grace asked.

Dad shook his head. “Unfortunately not. We’ve got to get the refrigerant taken out—Bill’s gonna come over again and do that—and then we’ve gotta pay to get it hauled down to the landfill.”

There had to be a way to get a freezer without breaking the bank, and Grace was determined to find it. After dinner, she went on her computer and looked up freezers. A new one cost well over ten thousand dollars. Dad was right, there was no way they could afford that.

However, some freezers on eBay were less than half the price. Of course, they’d have to make sure the seller was legitimate, but it seemed like a better option.

Grace found Dad and showed him the freezers on eBay.

“We’ll have to hold off on it for a while, even for a used one,” he said. “I don’t wanna take out a loan to buy one. Then you’ve gotta pay interest forever. We can limp along with two freezers—pack things a little tighter, use the freezer chests in the back room to store extra stuff, and restock as things get bought out. It’s not good, but it could be worse. We oughtta be grateful we’ve got two freezers that still work.”

Grace was still looking at freezers on eBay when someone knocked on the door. She peered out the window and saw Doc on the front porch. She’d called him to tell about the freezer earlier, but he had been out at the Cadillac hospital with a patient he’d driven there.

Grace opened the door. “Jim! Come in!”

He came in, tall in the entryway. “Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner. What’s going on with the freezer situation?”

“It’s awful,” Grace said. “Just when things were going well, this had to happen. It’s going to be so expensive to get another one, I’ve been looking all over the Internet to see if I can find a deal on one somewhere.”

Doc pursed his lips. “You look like you could use a break. Wanna go for a walk and tell me about it?”

“That sounds heavenly. I’ve been stewing over eBay and Craigslist for hours—I could use some fresh air.”

They started up Main Street, away from the businesses and into the residential part of town. The sun had set, and dusk was falling.

“Thanks for coming over,” Grace said. “You must be exhausted after such a long day. And hungry, too.”

Doc shook his head. “Oh, I’m not tired,” he said. “And I ate at the hospital in Cadillac. It’s cheaper than going to a restaurant.”

“And probably better than eating canned soup at home,” Grace said.

Doc grinned. “I’m just ‘the guy who eats canned soup’ to you, aren’t I?” he said. “Tell me about the freezer. Do you have any leads on a replacement?”

“Dad said we can’t get one for a while,” Grace said. “Too much money, on top of all the medical bills and everything. I guess we just won’t be able to stock as much freezer food. Right now we don’t have any ice cream at all, because it all melted before we discovered the freezer was broken. The supplier isn’t coming until Wednesday. I’m gonna make a run into Cadillac tomorrow morning to get a few things to tide us over. I’ll have to bring coolers to bring the stuff back.”

“There ought to be some way you can get another freezer,” Doc said. “You can’t limp along with two of them for long, especially when some people are saying you can’t run your store and it ought to be turned into a co-op.”

“That’s what I’m worried about—people will probably pounce on this and say it proves we aren’t capable of running the store,” Grace said. “Well, what else can we do? We don’t have the money to buy a freezer.”

“Have you thought of taking out a loan?”

“My dad doesn’t want to have to pay interest on a loan. That would just put us farther in the hole.”

They walked along in silence.

Doc stopped in his tracks. “I’ve got it!”

“What?”

“An idea. Why doesn’t the store host a fundraiser?”

“A fundraiser? Jim, we just finished telling the town we weren’t asking people to give us money!”

“There isn’t any shame in asking for money if you need it,” Doc said. “But this isn’t asking people to give you money. You’ll be selling them something. You can do a fundraising dinner. The store provides the ingredients, we get some people to cook, and the town comes and eats. How does that sound?”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Grace said, “but how would we pull it off? We’d have to find someplace to cook all the food and serve everybody, and my dad still has to be careful of his ankle. It sounds like way too big a project.”

“Your friends would help out,” Doc said. “I would. And I know Alex and Charlie and probably some of the church ladies would want to help too. Maybe we could use the fire hall for the dinner.”

“Well,” Grace said, “I feel bad putting you all to a lot of work like that. Most of you already help me with so much!”

Doc shook his head. “I can’t speak for the others, but I think it would be fun.”

“Well, if you really, actually, want to do it,” Grace said, “I won’t say no.”

Doc grinned down at her. “I’ll start rounding up the troops. When do you think we ought to have the fundraiser? The sooner, the better, I’d say.”

“I guess we’d better talk to my parents about that,” Grace said, “and we should see when the fire hall is available. But, Jim, do you think the people in town will actually come to a store fundraiser? Maybe they’ll think this is just a sign that the store is circling the drain already—we have to fundraise in order to keep going!”

“Anybody can have equipment that breaks down on them,” Doc said. “It’s the way you handle an incident like that that shows what kind of a storekeeper you are. You’re going to show the town that you take action when things go wrong. That’s a good look for the store.”

Grace smiled. “I hope you’re right. Thanks, Jim. I feel better.”

He grinned. “Just wait until you see my cooking skills in action at the fundraiser.”

“Oh, you mean opening cans of soup?” Grace asked.

“Of course,” Doc said.