Hello Podunk Pundit readers, if any are left. As you may have noticed there’s been a hiatus of several months in my posts. Given my age you might have assumed I was in intensive care or a cemetery, or more pleasantly on an around he world cruise, but no.

I wasn’t AWOL but the tech on which Podunk depends — WordPress —suddenly had a conniption fit. It kept insisting I use a new password but no matter how many changes I made it still wouldn’t give me access to my account. 

A “prove you’re human” test that required one to do a math problem like 4+3 also went crazy. It repeatedly said 4+3 didn’t equal 7 and 9+4 didn’t equal 13. This “welcome to the twilight zone” experience failed to put me back in business, but did cause my blood pressure numbers to increase.

WordPress offered no help except to refer me to third party tech support which billed me for their time and when they failed to solve the problem of the ghost in the machine also failed to refund the fee. 

Since I am of an antediluvian, pre-transistor generation, my tech savvy amounts to having watched Dad replace burned out vacuum tubes in the back of a black and white Dumont TV and older kids tinker with their Ham radios. So today’s tech is as alien to me as steamships maned by gun toting sailors were to aboriginal tribes when they arrived on their tropical islands.

In short, I abandoned all hope until a friend who is a Podunk reader sent me to  guy who might be able to solve the problem. He made a house call and reenacted the old joke of the mechanic called upon to fix the vast turbine of the Hoover Dam that has quit working. He takes out a hammer and smacks the machine which immediately starts. He hands the executive in charge a bill for $10,000 who demands an explanation. The mechanic takes back the bill and itemizes it. Hitting the turbine: $1.00. Knowing where to hit: $9,999.00.

Luckily, in my case, the guy’s charge for the ten minutes it took him to figure out the glitch was more modest but just as mysterious to the technically illiterate. Will the fix last or will the gremlins strike again? Who knows? Not technological primitives like me. But until the next crash I will scribble my little Podunk posts and hope you receive them via the mysterious alchemy of the internet.