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There’s one vacuum cleaner attachment that embodies my deepest affection for vintage vacuum cleaners, and that’s the first Electrolux air-powered polisher. My recollection for this device goes back to when I just two years old.
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Mama had one with her Model E-Automatic Electrolux. She taught piano students, and found that she could put me in a corner of the music room with the polisher and I would entertain myself with it all morning.
It was a Big Day in the Lester Household (well, for me anyway!) when Mama and Daddy undertook their annual spring cleaning. That chore involved moving all the living-room furniture to one side and polishing the hardwood floor and then moving it all to the other side and polishing the rest of it.
It's a funny thing about these polishers. I looked for one for years and years and years. I had yearned for one ever since Mama got her new Tan G in 1968 and she would not let me use the left-over AE "waxer" (as she called it) because the Electrolux salesman told her it would put a strain on the Model G motor and burn it out.
Since I could never use it with her new cleaner, I would just play with it "stand alone." Then one day I became curious about its innards. With great difficulty, I took it all apart. Then I could never get it back together. (Give me a break, I was only 12.) The last conscious memory I have of it is the top half of it sitting on the ground in the back yard. I don't honestly remember what happened to the rest of it.
That was one of the first things I actively started looking for when I started collecting vacuums in the mid 1970s. Then one day I found one at a flea market in Annapolis and I thought I was going to bust my gut, I got so excited. When I moved to California I had to leave it behind, along with a lot of other vacuum cleaners and accessories, which "somehow happened" to get thrown out, including that polisher.
I continued looking and looking and looking out here in L.A. and then, once again, I finally found one in one of those big old funky "Purple Hearts Veterans" thrift shops. A couple of years later I found another. And another. And then another.
Soon I had a half-dozen of them. Just like the magic brooms in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” they kept multiplying. At last count when I had my most recent garage cleanout, I had 75 of them! I ended up giving more than half of them to a friend who sold them to a scrap-metal dealer.
Needless to say, my desire to accumulate any more of them disappeared once I realized how many I had. Even when they turn up on eBay I cast a blind eye.
Until last week.
One came up on eBay that was in immaculate condition, apparently never used. So I placed a low bid on it. Well, Glory Be! I was the only bidder and got it for almost nothing.
It arrived yesterday. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.
I can’t believe that it was ever used. As so often happened, it probably got put away in a closet and forgotten. Also in the box were Vaporizer and Tuftor attachments, also glistening and showing no signs of use.
My husband was even more convinced than ever that I’m out of my mind. “They’re all over the house!” he said (which they are). But when he saw the condition it’s in, he did seem to realize it was quite a find!</div>
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<div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b">
<div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xdj266r x126k92a">
There’s one vacuum cleaner attachment that embodies my deepest affection for vintage vacuum cleaners, and that’s the first Electrolux air-powered polisher. My recollection for this device goes back to when I just two years old.
<div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">
Mama had one with her Model E-Automatic Electrolux. She taught piano students, and found that she could put me in a corner of the music room with the polisher and I would entertain myself with it all morning.
It was a Big Day in the Lester Household (well, for me anyway!) when Mama and Daddy undertook their annual spring cleaning. That chore involved moving all the living-room furniture to one side and polishing the hardwood floor and then moving it all to the other side and polishing the rest of it.
It's a funny thing about these polishers. I looked for one for years and years and years. I had yearned for one ever since Mama got her new Tan G in 1968 and she would not let me use the left-over AE "waxer" (as she called it) because the Electrolux salesman told her it would put a strain on the Model G motor and burn it out.
Since I could never use it with her new cleaner, I would just play with it "stand alone." Then one day I became curious about its innards. With great difficulty, I took it all apart. Then I could never get it back together. (Give me a break, I was only 12.) The last conscious memory I have of it is the top half of it sitting on the ground in the back yard. I don't honestly remember what happened to the rest of it.
That was one of the first things I actively started looking for when I started collecting vacuums in the mid 1970s. Then one day I found one at a flea market in Annapolis and I thought I was going to bust my gut, I got so excited. When I moved to California I had to leave it behind, along with a lot of other vacuum cleaners and accessories, which "somehow happened" to get thrown out, including that polisher.
I continued looking and looking and looking out here in L.A. and then, once again, I finally found one in one of those big old funky "Purple Hearts Veterans" thrift shops. A couple of years later I found another. And another. And then another.
Soon I had a half-dozen of them. Just like the magic brooms in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” they kept multiplying. At last count when I had my most recent garage cleanout, I had 75 of them! I ended up giving more than half of them to a friend who sold them to a scrap-metal dealer.
Needless to say, my desire to accumulate any more of them disappeared once I realized how many I had. Even when they turn up on eBay I cast a blind eye.
Until last week.
One came up on eBay that was in immaculate condition, apparently never used. So I placed a low bid on it. Well, Glory Be! I was the only bidder and got it for almost nothing.
It arrived yesterday. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.
I can’t believe that it was ever used. As so often happened, it probably got put away in a closet and forgotten. Also in the box were Vaporizer and Tuftor attachments, also glistening and showing no signs of use.
My husband was even more convinced than ever that I’m out of my mind. “They’re all over the house!” he said (which they are). But when he saw the condition it’s in, he did seem to realize it was quite a find!</div>
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