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I've been taking advantage of the current "STAY HOME" order to spend a lot of time with vacuum cleaners. I figured, I may as well make the best of a bad situation.

I'm sure nearly all of you fellow vacuum cleaner collectors have seen the "I Love Lucy" episode "Sales Resistance" where Lucy is fast-talked into buying a "Handy Dandy Vacuum Cleaner" by a fast-talking salesman. Some of us have watched it many times!

Here is the very machine that was called the "Handy Dandy Vacuum Cleaner" in that episode. Well, not the very exact machine but the same make and model, manufactured by Westinghouse.

It has a fantastic atomic-age "Flash Gordon" aesthetic -- it looks like it's ready to blast off into outer space.

I found it at a large thrift shop in Long Beach, California many years ago, sometime in the mid-to-late 1990s. I almost didn't get it because the motor unit was sitting by itself on a jumbled pile of old TVs, VCRs, turntables and other uninteresting suburban cast-offs.

But when I walked into another area of the thrift shop I saw the original carton that contained the hose, attachments and caddy. (The carton disintegrated long ago, sad to say.) I ran back to the vacuum cleaner and snatched it up before someone else did. ("As if!") I paid the grand sum of $7.97 for it.

The hose on Lucy's Handy Dandy vacuum cleaner appears to be white or light gray. However, I've seen several specimens of this model over the years and they've all had dark-red hoses like mine. For some reason, probably legal issues, vacuum cleaners on TV shows often have incorrect, mismatched bags or attachments and that may be reason. My hose is missing the cuffs at the two ends but I'm 99% certain that it's original.

The wands have kinda strange connections, ribbed aluminum strips that you rotate to lock the other wand and the attachments into place. They're kinda kludgy and require a good bit of futzing with them.

Mine even still has an original disposable bag inside!

This is another fun and almost forgotten vacuum cleaner I've recently come across during a very vigorous and thorough clean-up of my workshop. And on that note, someday soon after the terrible covid-19 pandemic is over, I'll have a lot of stuff to give away. So start planning!

"Just Another Day In Paradise."

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Y'all can watch the entire episode here...

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While cleaning out my workshop I was hoping to come across the missing red plastic hose cuffs. I didn't find them but did find something else that worked very nicely -- chrome rings from Kirby hoses! (Shhhhhh...don't tell anyone!)

Also, someone said they would like to see a video of the Westinghouse. See link.