
Transcriber's Note:
A beer‑truck driver with a habit of digging through Popular Science instead of the usual tabloids, he spends his weekends dreaming up gadgets while his home life teeters on the brink of chaos. A malfunctioning oil heater forces him into an improvised clean‑up that leaves his hands blackened and his patience wearing thin, and his wife Lottie’s anxiety over the sizzling stove adds a comic strain to the mess. The narrator’s knack for chemistry turns a domestic disaster into the spark for a far‑crazier experiment.
He’s been tinkering with a mysterious compound he calls the “water eater,” hoping it will solve the oily nightmare that’s seeped into their kitchen. As he mixes detergents, soaps, and a few secret ingredients, the narrative balances his blue‑collar humor with the uneasy thrill of playing with forces he barely understands. Listeners are drawn into a world where everyday chores collide with early‑cold‑war science, setting the stage for unexpected consequences that could change more than just a kitchen.
Language
en
Duration
~22 minutes (21K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2010-03-31
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
Subjects

1915–1979
A lively pulp-era science fiction writer, he built a reputation on clever, humorous short stories and kept publishing memorable magazine fiction through the 1950s. He also worked in radio, giving his career a practical, media-savvy edge that shows in the briskness of his storytelling.
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