New vs. Old.

In my Aunt Dolly's kitchen in my grandmother's 1922 house, there is a refrigerator that has been standing in the pantry since I was a little girl. I remember when the new fridge was delivered, and they took the smaller, older one that was there and carried it down the stairs to the kitchen in the basement. During the hot summer months, my grandmother and Aunt Dolly would turn on the oven in the basement kitchen, so the upstairs kitchen would be cool enough to eat in.

Cool enough is a relative term, because that house did not have central air-conditioning, or even a window air-conditioner, and only on the hottest of the hot summer days would a fan be put into a window. During the summer, Aunt Dolly would leave all the blinds closed, and even the curtains closed, only opening them up as the sun moved away from each room. I don't remember ever sitting in that house and feeling like there was no air to breathe.... somehow, her method worked. But then, when you get older and your body gets used to (and spoiled with) central air-conditioning, you start to wonder how we managed to get through a summer day back then in that big old house.

But..... the refrigerator. That old fridge had a few repairs over the years, but nothing that made my grandmother say it wasn't worth keeping. The repairman would order the part, install it, and everything would be good as new, except the ice cream would have melted and there never seemed to be enough people there at just that moment to eat it up so it wouldn't go to waste. ("Mangia! Mangia! So I no have to throw out!" my grandmother would be saying.) That old fridge, I have no doubt, is still working in that kitchen of my grandmother's house, which is now rented out to people who are probably wishing they had a brand new fancy-dancy refrigerator.

Be careful what you wish for. When we moved into this house, the fridge that was here was the kind with the freezer on the top, fridge on the bottom. In order to get a carton of juice or milk, you had to bend down and reach below the freezer, which really got to be a royal pain very quickly. We were used to having a double-door fridge in the other house, and we left that there when we moved, knowing we had a newer model in this kitchen. After two months of trying to get used to the freezer-up-fridge-down model, we gave in and went to Lowe's to get a double-door fridge for this house.

We found all sorts of new refrigerators, with all kinds of gadgets in the doors--- who in the world needs a television built into the door of a fridge? I finally found one with double doors on the top, and the freezer on the bottom. No water thing in the door, no TV in the door, just a plain old door, which is what I wanted. The brand was Samsung. Rated high in the consumer magazines. Fine. Lowe's delivered it, and carried out the fridge that was here into the garage for me...... we turned it on for the holidays, to store extra bottled water and it was perfect for defrosting the turkey.

The other day, we had to call a repairman to the house because the highly-rated new fridge was making funny noises. After just one year? Are you kidding me?! The repairman ordered the parts (two of them) and told me he'd be back as soon as they got the parts in the shop. While he was working and looking and thinking and writing, I told him about the old GE fridge that's been in my grandmother's kitchen for nearly fifty (50!) years. "Sure 'nough. You know why? 'Cause used to be everythin' was made right here in the US of A. Now'days, you don't know where anythin' comes from..... and it's all plastic and cheap metal that a two-year-old could bend up like a straw... that's why."

He told me that Samsung was indeed highly rated, but that's compared to the junk they're making today, not comparing them to the "real good stuff they made years ago." So what we have here is just a highly rated piece of junk, rather than the lowest of the low pieces of junk. The worst appliances on the planet now, according to this repairman, are the LG brands. (LG standing for Lots of Garbage.)

The fridge in my kitchen is still working. But it's also still making noises. When the repairman comes, I will have to empty it all out again and scatter all the food around the counter-tops once again. He will tell me that his job used to be an easy one... take out a real honest-to-goodness part and replace it with another honest-to-goodness part. "Now'days, I'm flyin' by the seat of my pants...... everythin' in there is a computer-board.... looks more like the workins' of a space ship than the inside of a refrigerator."

Which may be a good thing. Because after listening to those noises for three days now, I'm about ready to send that Samsung right to the blessed moon.