The Wilson Post
LEBANON WEATHER

Out with the new, in with the old




Dr. George Robertson

Dr. George Robertson

What does a dying machine sound like? All of my life I’ve been on the alert for motors that are struggling. From the minute I got my 1953 Ford, I began to become in tune to its every thump and bump. After all, it was more than a decade old when I put down the hundred dollars for its purchase. The prominent knock I heard when I attempted to accelerate was finally fixed with inserts in the crankcase – a really big job.

So when my refrigerator started shuttering every few minutes when it tried to start up, I could tell it was on its way out. The repairman said the compressor was gone on this built-in-1980 model, only 37 years old. How could that be? The older one, which we moved to our new home in 1980, actually dated back to 1974. It was still running well after all of those years and hadn’t had so much as a lint removal from its motor unit. What happened to the ingenuity that created this old machine which, over time, has outperformed the newer model?

With the death of our primary refrigerator, we started the shuffle of trying to find a cold place for all its holdings. Our neighbor was kind enough to let us use his back-up freezer for the fish, quail and last year’s dove that had been frozen in the recesses of the broken one. Linda got the plastic cooler from the basement for use, but that required a daily infusion of ice we had to replenish from the grocery store. Our meals became dictated by what was getting ready to go bad from the lack of refrigeration.

The replacement refrigerator would take more than a week to come from the shipper. Maybe if we had been less demanding with the size and color for the new one, we could have gotten a unit in stock rather than the black, stainless steel model we now waited for. By the way, the guarantee for this new one was one year, and it cost what a dozen would have cost a few years ago. What happened to the lifetime endorsement, and whose lifetime are we talking about: mine or General Electric’s? There are name brands which would be unrecognized in the past, like LG, Samsung and Subzero. Frigidaire was the only one from the past which used to be the word used when referring to cold storage. But that was before the word “icebox,” which was what we are living with at the present, went out of vogue.

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