Throw't Away Mon

Modern machines never get a new beginning.

————

That’s what the barefoot Rastaman at the electronic repair shop said to me. I had brought in my old fax machine for repair. “How long you have this Mon”? I said, “Oh, I don’t know, maybe nine or ten years”. He slowly shook his dreadlocks in sad disbelief. He looked at me gravely and said, “Throw’t away Mon, ’tis old, you must buy a new one”. 

          He refused to fix the fax. 

          That’s the way things go these days. Nobody repairs anything. They have no interest in even trying. 

          Times ain’t now like they used to be.

          My Dad repaired whatever broke unto the umpth generation of repair. He resisted buying a new anything until the last possibility of repair was exhausted. I know of only one exception to his firm position on this policy. 

          One day, when my sister Rhonda was a teenager the hair-dryer broke. She wasn’t upset. She saw it as opportunity. It was Mom’s hair-dryer and over thirty years old. Rhonda really wanted a modern hair-dryer capable of doing some fashionable something or other the old hair-dryer couldn’t do. Mom didn’t see it that way. Dad could fix the one they had. 

          Disappointed, Rhonda wondered privately to Dad that maybe he might not be able fix the dryer this time? Dad, catching the wink in her wondering smiled and said, yes, that just might be the way of it this time. They became co-conspirators. 

          Dad told Mom the dryer was beyond fixing.

           For the first time ever Dad betrayed his repair policy principle for the fun of a little joke on Mom, and because he liked giving Rhonda what she wanted. She got her new hair-dryer.

          It probably hurt a little. It never happened again.

          Dad wasn’t much different from the rest of his generation when it came to notions about  whether to fix what you had or buy something new. It wasn’t only that they were all children of the Great Depression. That was part of the reason. The other part was their allegiance to the long America pioneer tradition of making-do with what you have.

          That tradition is now mostly historic. 

          Buy, throw-away, and buy again, is the choice du jour. Manufacturers encourage that  choice with planned obsolescence, poorly made parts, and the sealing of formerly separate  parts into single unopenable-sealed-units. 

          The rationale for this was that labor costs would be less because of the ease of replacing many parts with one inclusive part. 

           Replacing many parts with one inclusive part seemed like a sensible idea. 

          Some years ago I took my car in for a repair; the automatic window on the driver-side had stopped working. That’s when I discovered the problem with unopenable-sealed-units. 

          The mechanic said the witzit inside the omnipod had gone bad.

          How much to fix it, I asked. “Well, in the old days it would be about ten dollars for a new witzit and around thirty dollars for labor”. And now, I asked. “The witzet is sealed inside the omnipod, so I can’t get to it. 

          I’ll have to order a new omnipod. That’ll be three hundred sixty-five dollars, but the labor will only be ten dollars”, he said by way of cheering me. 

          I wasn’t much cheered - though since then I’m no longer surprised. 

          I’ve become hardened to expensive repairs, no chance of repair at all, and short-lived products that are cheaper to throw away than to fix. 

          So have we all. That doesn’t mean we should happy about it. In the last several years I’ve gone through four cell-phones, and three laptops. When I tell that to young people they shrug. “What else” they seem to be thinking, that’s just the way things are, old guys don’t get it”.

          Well, I do get it, I just don’t think it should be “the way things are”. 

          I still prefer things that last. Maybe that’s because I remember when people expected that whatever thing they bought new would keep on working - well into old age.

          Long ago when I was a little kid my Aunt Arlene had a small cast-iron grinder she used to make, egg-salad, ham-salad, applesauce, crushed walnuts, or anything else that needed grinding. It was hand-cranked, adjustable for fineness of grind, and wonderfully efficient. Its few parts came easily apart for cleaning. 

          I don’t know what became of that old grinder. Wherever it is I’m sure it still grinds. 

          Meantime, I’m hopeful my current laptop will last a few more years. 

          I long for that former time when durability was expected and fixing what was broken, normal. That said, I do appreciate digital convenience. Modern electronic gizmos make many jobs easier than they used to be. 

          I’d like the new digital products better yet if they lasted longer.

          I can’t escape “Throw’t away Mon”.

          I wish I could.

By K. L. Shipley

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