Author - Wakeley Purple

Submitted By - Radio Noise

I knew something was up by the grins on the clerks' faces in the office when I got my trouble tickets to work one morning. One of them was from an old woman complaining that her radio went off when she opened the refrigerator door! I mumbled "thanks a lot!" and jumped in the truck.

The house, 'fridge, and tube-type radio were all about thirty years old. The
woman had a half-century on all of them. She turned on the radio and let the tubes warm up for a few seconds. When the station came on she went over to the refrigerator, opened the door, and poof, off went the sound from the radio. She closed the door and it started back up just fine.

"Oh boy", I said to myself. "I'm going to have to do some quick talking here".  But then I remembered instructions on some of the old TVs and radios that said to try reversing the plug to improve reception.

With great authority I pulled the radio plug and put it in the other way.
When I opened the refrigerator the radio still played! Having been an
amateur radio operator years before I tried for a few seconds to figure out
why this might have worked, but my head started to hurt, so I quit.

Back at the office I couldn't wait to tell the clerks how easy it was for a
person of my talents to fix this problem, and we all had a good laugh.

Wakeley Purple

Kentucky Utilities, '74-'91.