Vacuums -- nightmare revisited

If anyone remembers my rant on vacuums from some time back, you'll understand this post.

It started out as any other night cleaning the church until I heard an ominous rattling sound about the same time that the handle of the vacuum twisted sideways. Uh oh. I turned off the vacuum and pulled on the handle a bit -- sure enough, the bottom pin holding the handle to the vacuum had come off. And in the absence of it being on the floor, the rascal had been sucked up into the vacuum (amazing since it won't even suck up lint on one pass).

With a sigh I started to unzip the cloth bag and a huge puff of dust came out. Uh oh. I peeked in side and sure enough, the inside of the cloth bag was full. The problem is, all that dust and dirt was supposed to be inside the paper bag INSIDE the cloth bag. *sigh*

I unplugged the vacuum and rolled it toward the side door and the dumpster outside. Once there, I unzipped the bag and whoooaaaa! Puff balls and curling, roiling greyish-brown masses exploded out.
I unhooked the cloth bag from the vacuum and carefully began to dump onto the top trash bag in the dumpster. I saw a silver glimmer and found half the missing pin. I kept dumping but the other half either wasn't in there, or eluded me. I had to pull out the inside paper bag, and then turn the cloth bag inside-out and bang it against the dumpster to try to clean it, while billows of greyish stuff filled the air.

Long story short -- vacuum works, although the handle needs a new pin (my husband is going to take care of that), but I am covered in nasty, greyish dirt.

This incident could be related to the kind soul who, until the vacuum started smoking, tried to vacuum the three tons of pine needles up when they took the Christmas tree down, but I doubt it.
That incident was cured by replacing the belt and cleaning out the long tube that was packed with needles. Hm, then again, the bag was replaced at the same time...