Does Anything Last?
Nothing lasts. That’s what everyone tells me.
A new car lasts as long as its warranty, then gaskets blow, leaks spring, corks pop, hopes fizzle… and woe to the consumer foolish enough to take it back to the dealership for repair.
Friendships eventually disappoint, disagree, discourage, disparage, and finally just disengage… then dissolve and disappear.
Relationships are as disposable as appliances and automobiles, and might work out better and with less bitterness if people didn’t just grab one and expect it to last forever. But most of my friends have sought out marriages, interviewing candidates for that job-description meant to be a permanent position, and now they have multiple divorces corresponding to their multiple matrimonies.
A tank of gas doesn’t last very long, either. I recently heard someone complaining about this while she filled the tank of a "minivan" ("mini"!?) that looked like an Armored Personnel Carrier. (That's all tres chic right now: soccer-moms don't wanna look like soccer-moms so they buy minivans that impersonate SUVs.) But I rarely hear any of the complainers mention hydrogen or alternatives to fossil fuels. Funny, that.
And money doesn’t go very. We’re permanently at war, which should boost the economy, but this war is pushing up oil prices, thus raising raw material costs and bashing the manufacturing sector and the economy. All of the Re-Election, ironically, but None of the Business Boom.
Somehow this doesn’t affect me much personally, and my friends wonder why. Then they realize: I don’t have a girlfriend or a big new car (thus minimizing payments of one kind or another), I have only a few real friends (all of whom have been tried and true for a dozen years), I don’t have any alimony (having never had a divorce), and my Mom and my cats and dog are unfailing companions.
Somehow I’ve become the Parish Priest, the Eccentric Hermit and the Village Idiot rolled into one.
So my friends come to me, flock-like, and ask me:
What lasts?
And after much meditation and cogitation I can only answer:
The Maytag.
The Maytag Dryer.
Okay, it doesn’t drive me anywhere. It doesn’t talk to me or keep me company. In fact, it doesn’t do much of anything. It just… resides in the basement, waiting for a new motor. But it is a fine appliance, and I still love it.
This is a real dryer, not one of these modern lightweight tin cans that have something like a model airplane motor straining to turn the barrel and heat the clothes. The Maytag weighs in at about 300# of thick, white-enameled steel body and hefty brush-magnet motor and rubber belts the size of grape-vines. It’s thirty years old and just now finally... got tired.
And I can’t bear to part with it. Which is convenient, because I also can’t get it up the basement stairs without a service elevator, or possibly a trained pachyderm.
I called the ancient fellow at the parts store, and he confirmed what I suspected:
“Aaaayup. They shore just don’t make ‘em like that anymore. That Maytag Repair Guy really was the bored-est man ever. Get yerself a new motor for ‘at beast and she’ll dry yer clothes fer another thirty years.”
So what can I do? I can’t toss out The Maytag. But I can’t find a motor to fix it. Hell, I may never fix it, but there it sets. It has childhood memories. When I was a kid The Maytag was the only furniture I could climb on without Mom yelling at me.
“Don’t sit on the TV, you’ll break it! Don’t jump on the couch! That hutch wasn’t meant to lean on! Don’t climb on The Mayta…err, never mind.”
I’m convinced a circus elephant juggling donkeys with its trunk could have stood on The Maytag without causing the slightest dent.
So The Maytag sits in the basement, alone but not forgotten, a sturdy reminder of the simplicity of days gone by. I pay homage to it daily when I change the cat litter.
Someday, when humans are long extinct from the Earth and the house is a rotted pile of wood-dust and tarnished aluminum siding, The Maytag will still stand as an everlasting monument to Human Ingenuity, to A Time When Things Wuz Done Right.