When I write my letter to Amana I’ll have a lot of things to say.

It won’t be a complaint letter, not really. How can I complain about a new dishwasher that was made in America, works fine and cost only $300?

People like stories, so in my letter to Amana I’ll tell the story of our new dishwasher.

Once upon a time (it was last week) my wife told me our old dishwasher, though still working in the sense of running through its cycles, was not working in the sense of getting the dishes clean.

She tried and tried to fix it by cleaning out the slime inside but still had to wash dishes by hand after the dishwasher finished.

I offered to install the vintage Kitchenaid unit I got at a yard sale for $40 with the intention of putting it in the garage apartment, but Honey said no.

“We have money. I want a new one,” she said firmly.

I looked up new dishwashers on the internet. Some that cost $1,500 had wi-fi so you could turn them on with your phone, and a special rack for stemware so the maid would not have to wash the champagne glasses by hand. Nice.

My frugal, practical wife searched for dishwashers under $500 and found Lowe’s was having a sale. She told me she would be happy with the cheapest one they had, so we went to Lowe’s. The one she picked wasn’t the cheapest, but next to cheapest. That one was an Amana, too. They have the same plastic bodies, mechanisms and features, but ours has a stainless steel front so it doesn’t look cheap.

Lowe’s offered delivery and installation for $185. I said no because, geez, that would almost double the cost, but more than that because I’m a manly man. I’ve installed a few dishwashers in my time, thank you very much. There are only three things to hook up: electric line-in, water line-in, water line-out. Disconnect the old. Re-connect the new.

Simple. At least, it should have been simple.

I can’t recall whether the clerk mentioned an installation kit, but I wouldn’t have gotten it anyway, given my vast experience and a virtual plumbing shop of parts in my garage.

I figured I’d have it installed and running in an hour.

After three frustrating hours, including a fruitless trip to a local building supply, I had failed to complete the sole remaining task needed for success: threading a female fitting on my water line-in onto what appeared to be a three-quarter-inch male nipple on the dishwasher.

(I apologize for not using gender-neutral terms in the previous sentence, but I couldn’t think of any other words and I bet you can’t either. Also I would caution you, dear reader, not to chat with someone about this issue in the presence of small children, else you may find yourself trying to explain to little ears how it is that plumbing has boy and girl parts that fit together.)

At wit’s end, and fearful that my desperate attempts I would bung-up the nylon threads on the dishwasher, I gave up and called Lowe’s. The appliance department clerk listened patiently to my story and suggested I get the installation kit because it seemed to work for other customers.

Without a better explanation I was still leery, but low on options. How manic depressed would I be, I wondered, if after an hour’s round-trip to Lowe’s, the kit didn’t fit when I got back home?

I resolved this by taking the dishwasher with me.

When I had brought it home in its packaging, I was surprised at how lightweight it was. Out of the box it was even lighter. I picked it up with one arm and carried it on my hip out the door, down the steps and onto my truck.

At Lowe’s a different clerk showed me the water line installation kit and pointed out the end connecting to the dishwasher.

“It looks like a garden hose fitting,” I said.

“It is,” the clerk said. “They’re all like that now.”

I could not believe my ear, as Evander Holyfield would have said, but it appeared to be true. With joy in my heart, I paid the $33 for the kit, jumped in my truck and started for home, then stopped, remembering Reagan’s maxim “trust but verify,” and returned to the Lowe’s parking lot. I tore open the kit; it threaded it onto my dishwasher’s water intake line, slick as a whistle.

Enormously relieved as I am that my individual dishwasher issue has been resolved, I remain at sea on the larger implications. Are garden hose fittings indeed on all new dishwashers, or only the cheap ones? Is this part of the dumbing-down of America or a brilliant, practical innovation? Is it a customer enhancement aimed at women, empowering them to perform a task traditionally done by men? Was it done purposely and nefariously by a shadowy cabal as one more step in freeing women from needing men at all?

I have no ready answers to these big questions. But I do have a suggestion for my letter to Amana: put a big yellow sticker on every dishwasher that says, “DON’T BE A DOPE. BUY THE INSTALLATION KIT.”

Or maybe I’ll just write, “Dear Amana, love the dishwasher. Best wishes to everybody in Amana, Iowa, from a happy Gas Valley customer here in West Virginia.”