By Percival Dunmore, Kitchen and Grounds Correspondent

SOUTH ORCHARD — For 47 years, the stainless steel dishwasher in the fellowship hall kitchen at Bramble Creek Fellowship has cleaned every plate, cup and casserole dish the congregation has ever dirtied. For the last 31 of those years, only one person on earth has known how to turn it on.

That person is Virgil Oberholt, 82, a retired boiler inspector who joined the church in 1995 and quietly became the machine's sole keeper after its previous operator moved to a lake house and stopped answering the phone. This month, after what members describe as years of gentle pleading, Oberholt agreed to take on an apprentice.

"I'm not saying I'm going anywhere," Oberholt said, standing beside the machine with one hand resting on its lid like a farmer on a favorite cow. "I'm saying somebody else should know where the second valve is. Just in case I'm at my granddaughter's on a potluck Sunday."

The startup sequence, according to the few people who have watched it, takes roughly four minutes. It involves opening a valve under the sink, closing a different valve behind the ice machine, tapping a panel near the floor three times with a broom handle, and waiting for what Oberholt calls "the right hum." Turning the main dial before the right hum arrives, he says, results in "a noise you don't want to explain to the trustees."

None of it has ever been written down. The machine's original manual was lost in a 1988 kitchen remodel, and Oberholt has declined every request to make a new one. "You don't learn this from paper," he said. "You learn it from standing here and listening."

The apprentice is Tessa Lindqvist, 34, a tax accountant who volunteered after the Harvest Supper last fall, when Oberholt was home with a head cold and 140 people ate off paper plates that kept folding in half. "I just wanted the paper plates to never happen again," she said. "I didn't realize I was signing up for an oral tradition."

Lindqvist has completed six training sessions so far. She has not yet been allowed to touch the broom handle. In session four, she was permitted to open the first valve while Oberholt watched, and she says he nodded once, which other members tell her is "very high praise."

The congregation has taken a keen interest. Members of the kitchen committee now bring folding chairs to watch the Wednesday night sessions, and the youth group has started a betting pool, paid in cookies, on the date of Lindqvist's first solo start. The women's circle has knitted her a pot holder that reads "Keeper of the Hum, in training."

Church trustees have discussed replacing the dishwasher at least nine times since 2002. Each time, a repair quote for a new unit arrives, and each time, Oberholt reminds them that the old one has never actually broken. "It's not broken," he said again this week. "It's particular. Those are different things."

At press time, Lindqvist had reported hearing the right hum on her own for the first time, and Oberholt had responded by announcing a written exam that he said would be given verbally.