I have a microwave oven in the kitchen manufactured by Montgomery Wards.

It was my grandmother’s. I strongly suspect it was the original. It’s not far detached from a Navy ship’s radar array. I think if you could operate it with the door open, birds would fall smoking from the sky for a mile around, and my DNA would be twisted into a pretzel.

I remember when my grandmother got it. It was the first microwave oven any of us had ever seen. It’s a big appliance, heavy as the dickens, but you could cook a 20 pound turkey in that baby. The lights in the house dim momentarily when I turn it on.

There used to be a set of cards for it that, if you poked them into a little slot on the front, would program the thing for recipes. You’d get a card that said "20 Pound Turkey" and stick it in the little slot, turn it on, and the thing would do all the work for you. It’s got a heavy glass shelf in the middle, too, which is convenient. I don’t know what happened to the cards. I probably threw them away when I discovered there was not a card for "gumbo."

I’m very attached to the old thing. I will cry when it goes belly-up. I don’t like those dinky new microwaves, the ones the size of a hatbox. What can you do with that? Roast a Cornish hen, at best. Granted, my electricity bill may go down by 30 percent, but what the hey?

My grandparents were also the first in the family to have a color television and the first refrigerator with ice water and ice cube dispensers on the front door. I loved that fridge when I was a kid, and drank so much cold, iced water I spent a lot of time in the bathroom.

The color television was a treat, too. We didn’t get a color set at home until I was in my teens. But we had an old Catalina that had a stereo console built in, which amounted to a radio and a turntable. I used to play my records on it, and my father would complain about "that damn noise" but he let me play it. He’d just retreat to the shop while I did.

Also in the kitchen is a gas stove. I can’t cook on an electric stove. Ruin supper every time. It’s not a fancy one, by any stretch. In fact, when I went to buy it, I searched high and low for a gas stove that looked sorta old fashioned. I had spent considerable time and effort making my kitchen kinda woodsy, you know, like a cottage or a cabin. I wasn’t about to put some new-fangled, black-glassed thing with a digital display and touch-contact buttons in there. I found one that has no buttons at all, and it has – brace yourself – knobs! I like knobs, not buttons. Buttons are for calculators and computers. Knobs are for stoves, forever and ever, amen.

If they’d put a snooze button on a walnut grandfather clock, I’d have one of those, instead of my little digital clock-radio on my nightstand.

Under the kitchen cabinet is a can opener that I can’t seem to operate correctly all the time. Sometimes I stick a can under it and it makes a perfect, automatic cut around the rim. Other times I fight it, and struggle with it and cuss it, and I end up with the top looking like Popeye’s spinach can after he used his pipe as a blow torch to open it.

Not long ago my trusty coffee pot bit the dust, so I went to get another. I don’t like it. The coffee doesn’t taste as good, and the design was obviously concocted by a complete moron. You have to lift the entire top to pour the water in and put the coffee filter and grinds in. It won’t clear the kitchen cabinet when I open it, so I have to pull it to the edge of the counter top and turn it sideways to fix coffee. Aggravating. It also does not have an automatic shut off like my other pot did, so I have to be careful about remembering to turn it off before I leave for work in the morning. Frustrating. I’m thinking on getting a percolator. Now that was a coffee pot! Drip coffee is pseudo-coffee anyway. My grandmother on my mom’s side, Eremise, would hand-drip her coffee. The aroma was heavenly.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a Neanderthal. I don’t rip 14-foot cypress planks with a handsaw, I use my table saw. I don’t cross-cut lumber with a handsaw, either, and I don’t sand by hand unless I have to. But if I had my druthers, I’d plow up the back yard and grow tobacco, cocoa and coffee beans. I would then make my own cigars, chocolate bars and coffee.

Some modern conveniences are nice. I’m near-blind enough now that I am grateful for big television screens. I don’t know what I’d do without a cordless drill. How in the world did we handymen get anything done with a corded drill, for Pete’s sake? I just don’t recall it. And to put a Phillips head bit on a cordless drill to drive screws makes you thank your lucky stars that you don’t have to use a screwdriver anymore.

My carpenter’s calculator is the greatest thing. I was always terrible at math, and don’t even think of throwing fractions at me. To this day I can’t do long division. But with my carpenter’s calculator I can actually divide fractional feet and inches on a base of 12, and if I want, convert the result to meters or decimals. But I still have to measure thrice and cut twice.

I do like audio electronics, though. I love CDs and receivers and speakers. While I prefer quiet and solitude, I have to admit that Boston’s Long Time on my living room stereo is a cathartic experience.

Guess I’m kind of a hybrid old-fogey. Pass the remote, please. I wanna go watch This Old House.