I’m pretty sure that anyone who stops by here will remember hearing this at some point in the past.
There is only one small problem with that these days and I’m sure you have heard of that too.
While The Great Depression churned out an entire generation of Pack Rats out of necessity, things today are not what they were then.
All these electronic Gee Gaws and computerized everything that we have in this Modern Age are for the most part, unserviceable and made as cheaply as humanly possible.
Something that has been anathema to me for many, many, years.
Who really needs a refrigerator that can communicate with your garage door opener?
I sure as hell don’t.
Especially when that overpriced refrigerator has a service life of two freaking years before some totally unnecessary resistor craps out in a Motherboard and you get to find out that because of the Supply Chain crunch that no new Motherboards are available and aren’t expected to be for some indeterminant time frame.
Now what?
Go buy another new Whiz Bang computerized refrigerator?
See Supply Chain Crunch and then look up this thing you have been hearing about called Inflation just for fun.
This meme was assuredly made to be tongue in cheek but it speaks much truth.
Ha Ha Funny right?
Try to find one of those old appliances.
They are out there but the prices are going up every day.
It’s not that I am picking on refrigerators either.
Everything is like that now.
All Major Appliances these days are garbage in my opinion unless you can find Industrial stuff and even then they are all digitally controlled.
Clothes don’t last either.
Even Levi’s Blue Jeans suck now, even though I quit buying them twenty years ago when they went Anti Gun.
They were WAY ahead of the curve.
Carhart just went Woke so they can kiss me where I sit too.
Anybody want to talk about vehicles?
HA HA HA HA!
You couldn’t GIVE me a new car.
Well you could actually.
I would immediately turn around and sell that sucker then take the cash and go find me something fifty five or sixty years old that had been restored instead.
So this time around when everything goes to hell things are going to be very different.
Sure, Grandma’s will still be able to save and reuse Bacon Grease, Aluminum foil and Cool Whip bowls like mine did but other than that, there won’t be any wearing things out like it was back in the day.
Point and laugh all you want, that was my and who knows how many peoples reality back in the day.
Other than a very few things, stuff just breaks now.
Everything is made out of plastic and plastic just doesn’t have the life span of Cast Iron or Steel.
3d Printing will only be so much good for so many things.
So when it all comes crashing down this time I think it will be real interesting to see how people are going to cope compared to our ancestors.
I think it will be the same except different.
After a whole bunch of trial and error.
I also think that because of economic reasons, the demand for quality, durable goods is going to make a resurgence.
People are going to wake up to the fact that cheap isn’t as good as they were led to believe.
Then we have the looming World Wide Food Crisis staring us all in the face.
For those who may have never had to deal with being broke and hungry, take notes.
Bravo, sir!
And those of us who can fix that old stuff might be really busy, too. And we’ll probably be swapping silver, ammo, food, and other supplies instead of greenbacks!
It’s much better to repair older major appliances than to get a new one, for just the reasons you describe. Have an older stove, washing machine, dryer, refrigerator, etc.? If it fails, fix it yourself. If you can’t for whatever reason (I’m sometimes in a wheelchair, & I can), pay somebody to do so. It’s still cheaper in the long run than buying new.
Phil’s right; they do not last very long nowadays, intentionally, and they no longer run on diodes and transistors (I was a tron tech, & I can fix that, too); it’s all microcircuitry, & if a chip lets go, the machine is dead. It’s replace the electronics package, or the whole unit, which may cost less. The motors and valves don’t endure as well anymore either.
As I drive around the Plains I see old farm equipment and old pick ups and larger trucks sitting there and wonder why would some one devote space on their property to store it and with the coming crash and unavailable microchips and hi tech sensors that run new tractors and combines and sprayers and even manure spreaders… A chip to evenly distribute shit? I see why, there is a small but growing industry rebuilding and refurbishing all this old equipment. farmers are tired to be beholden to John Deere or Allis Chalmers or Case and the other modern makers, a chip goes out in the field, the farmer is dead until a technician finally gets there after a day or two to fix it if he has the part. Old tractors could be fixed in the field with baling wire, duct tape and spit until that day is done and he works on the equipment to all hours of the night to start in the morning. But at least the farmer could fix it fast and get more work done. I can see old barn yards and old junk yards being stripped of old tools and being refurbished.
Before the Covid Bullshit hit I was seeing articles saying that some farmers were dragging their worn out OLD tractors out of the weeds and spending big money having them gone through and rebuilt.
You see the prices of used cars and pickups going through the roof?
It’s been that way for old tractors for several years now.
I was reading an article in a local farm mag and the article was about taking 50s and 60s Deere, Case and old IHs and for about $30,000 completely refurbishing them as opposed to a $120.000 comparable modern tractor and still be as productive with them. There is a local ag shop here that just does that repair, refurb and sells parts for these old queens.
They’re huge here in Northern Colorado. Some are 75 years old, and still earning their keep!
I inherited a cabin from my parents. It has an electric range and a refrigerator from the 1940s, and a “new” set from the 70s. The ones from the 40s are not in use now, but they still run. I am not selling them.
Yep, heard that phrase a time or three while growing up.
My folks had a propane powered fridge, that was purchase in the late ’40s, and was finally sold to a guy living in the Colorado Rockies sometime after I had left home.
Still running strong and keeping things cool/cold.
The guy showed up with a pickup to take it home with him, and thought they’d need a crew of 4 guys to load it into the pickup. My dad showed him how one guy could do it 🙂
Little story. At the house I was born into, there was already present a little white Frigidaire refrigerator, the type that was “modern”, IE did not have the condenser coil on top, but all hidden at the back and the compressor under the unit kind of inside a little integrated pedestal.That means the unit was probably purchased by my to be parents around 1948 or so. When dad passed away in 2001, the darned thing was still there, still running and cooling. As I recall, it had a motor outside of the compressor and a belt that went to a pulley on a shaft which drove the compressor unit. I don’t know what the seals were made of on that shaft, but they held up without failing. Belt was replaced once I think. The little ice box inside was always turning into a snow and ice packed cube during the humid season. Wish I had kept it but did not want to haul it thousands of miles.
I am pretty sure we are on our third fridge/freezer combo now in 40 years and each successive unit does fail at ever shorter intervals.
Beans in their own gravy over cornbread, seasoned with chopped onion and a sprinkle of vinegar. That’s what we ate when mom was cooking and dad wasn’t home. Southern Illinois/Indiana hillbillies.
Rice was always with butter and salt or butter and sugar.
Raw ham hocks boiled till they fall apart with nothing but a bay leaf for seasoning.
FWIW, I just picked up a couple of older laptops. Work fine. Solid, because they were an investment back then. Printers too. Old laser printers are bullet proof and the toners are cheap.
I’ve fixed our electric range (element swap), fridge (sensor, motherboard), clothes washer(several pumps), HVAC blower (motor swap), A/C condenser (capacitor, motor, fan, several and each), furnace control board (blown diode, replaced from junk box), monitors (recaps, backlights), TV (board swap), and countless other things around the house, down to a chewed up Barbie foot, that got wrapped in same colored thread and crazy glued.
The greenest solution is to fix the old and save all the embodied cost present in the thing.
I can recommend a book called “How to Diagnose and Fix Everything Electronic, Second Edition” to get you started. That and youtube will get you thru most things that can be fixed.
Why not try? It’s already broken, you can only win…
nick
Long post – Delete:
short edit:
I had damned near a book written out in response to this but anymore my heart just isn’t in it. For all but a few the human race is doomed.
Sadly if we ever suffer a situation where cheap, abundant energy goes away most folks will be dead or thinking about eating their neighbors within two weeks.
The simple fact is learning about carpentry, electricity and electronics, mechanics, hydraulics, hydrology, animal husbandry, farming and food growing, resource extraction, sewing, hunting, fishing, foraging, food processing and preservation, alternative energy sources, health and medicine, dentistry, firearms, shooting and reloading, and on and on and on — hell even manual skills such as how to use a shovel efficiently is beyond all too many let alone figuring out how to make do with what they have, forget about it.
Like I said most people are just going to be shit out of luck.
wes
wtdb
I am going to try and email you. Last couple of times it didn’t want to go through. If you don’t see one shortly get ahold of me.
received and replied
later
wes
wtdb
Oh man, I forgot onion sandwiches.
Thick sliced salted onion on white bread toast. Filled my belly more than one day.
n
Ha! Back in high school, a friend and I hung out in the school library A/V room. (Met him when he heard I had an oscilloscope.) He mentioned red onion and cheese sandwiches, which I had never heard of. He said, “Don’t bring lunch tomorrow, I’ll bring enough for both of us.” Next day, we are eating in the A/V room, and the librarian comes in to see if we had a chemical spill they needed to be worried about. Those sandwiches were, uh, loud. As were we, afterwards.
I have had some old appliances finally quit recently. My washing machine – Maytag, 1992 – gave up the ghost for good, can’t get bearings for it any more. My house A/C – Sears, 1988 – had to be replaced. Fixed everything but the compressor, but that finally gave up. I’m told the replacements will last 5 years if I’m lucky. Sigh.
I had to get a new refrigerator a while back when I had to redo my electrical system and code required GFCI/ARCFAULT breakers, the old fridges trip those. Just got a new place, much bigger, will put the new fridge (might not last but it is really cool) in there and the old one down in the basement, along with a freezer or two (well, one is in the arctic entry way, why power it in the winter?).
Install a ferrite bead EMI filter on the AC power line – the motor in the old fridge is arcin’ and sparkin’ and throwing harmonics on the line which the ARCfault breakers don’t like. Older power tools do the same thing.
Or, wait until the wiring passes code/inspection and then yank those useless pieces of crap out and put in a REAL breaker!
At my place I call cool whip containers Tupperware.
Matched set, no doubt!
Some of the ones that I have are 20+/- years old. It’s interesting to look at the covers seeing the decrease in ounces over time and the subtle way they decreased the size of the container, while the customer is paying the same price.
We’ve become a throw away society, especially with the introduction of cheap Chinese products. Instead of getting our new cell phones repaired when it goes tits up, screw it…just re-up our cell phone plans and get the new phone that comes with it.
I’ve had to change careers a few times…I was always good at troubleshooting electronics and opto electronics. Cable and satellite communications, aircraft electronics, law enforcement electronics, medical electronics and robotics…hell, even military target designator lasers…been there, done that.
It has become cheaper to throw away a product and get a new cheap replacement rather than pay a technician to troubleshoot and fix the problem. And now look what happens when a needlessly complex processor controlled item shits the bed and China refuses to release the needed chips to keep things running. I hope the Vaseline company is cranking out their product because tech companies are going harder and deeper on us than ever before.
Snowflakes can’t live without their latest oppressive capitalist gadgets to bitch about their miserable lives and spout their commie agendas far and wide. The Environment and shit…!
Just watch people’s reactions when their electric cars bread down…
We have only 1 newer appliance , a large freezer. Our kitchen fridge is a 1946 GE monitor top. The thermostat went bad this year. I tried repairing to no avail. Bought a new (different type) for 12 bucks. retrofitted it. Now chugging along great! our stove is a 1929 magic chef. Use every day. Also have a 1900 era wood / coal cookstove in kitchen. I do have a convection oven stove in basement for canning. Only used for that. Old stuff is the best stuff 😉
You got that right Phil. I don’t know the timing but this shit ain’t gonna last.
People paying 40 bucks a month to have a robot talk to you while you’re on your treadmill (peleton). Lets see, talking treadmilll for 40 mo or free and I talk to myself.
Keeping it short. There is tons of shit like that people are spending money on. How about 200/mo for the snake oil veggie fruit pills. Hoooly.
It’s gonna be a noisy crash for many.
Hot dogs for $2.00 a package? Where? I was at the grocery yesterday and it’s more like $3.50-$4.50..
I have made a very similar dish for years; smoked sausage, taters and cream of mushroom soup.I called it the Dog Vomit Special because that’s what it looked like, even tho it’s mighty tasty and will fill your belly on the cheap.
My wife and I do the same thing, but use cheapass hamburger. Have to make white gravy because Campbells now uses Soy Protein in their products and I am HIGHLY allergic to that!
Almost any meat will do, though.
You should taste her Tater Tot casserole, Layer of ground round on the bottom, then a layer of peas, followed a layer of Tater Tots and then pour 1 can Campbells Cream of Mush (1/2 can of milk added, stir it together) on top (but we now use another non-soy brand of cream of mushroom, and even make our own Cream o’ Mush) – Wifey Unit tells me to mix in finely chopped onions and other seasoning in the ground round before layering. We use glass casserole baking pans, 9″ x 13″, grease ’em first. 350 for an hour.
Why do you think I’m so fat, Cederq? ;P
A good cook, you got very lucky! And may I request that dish when I am back that way? Sounds good! I am salivating as I type…
My brother bought a new Lexus SUV, probably not the big one, a couple of years ago. He attended a 2 or 4 hour (I forget) class to learn how to operate it. My wife’s ’16 Camry isn’t that bad but there are things behind that screen we haven’t tried. My ’02 Durango is a model of simplicity in operation but I think every thing from the map lights to the power seat goes through the computer. As far as I know, it’s not reporting to the NSA but I’m not so sure about the Camry. I used to do just about everything to my vehicles except automatic transmission internals, but age and complexity make me have to buy my repairs. Breaks my heart.
I think I have that fridge. The only problem with it isn’t the fridge but I had to get my electrical system up to code and that meant GFCI/Arcfault breakers and the motors in those fridges trip the arcfault. My new place doesn’t have arcfault breakers though so that fridge is going to be down in the basement for back ups.
Living through the Great Depression: After my aunt passed away, we found pill bottles full of change stashed everywhere throughout her house. Every drawer, every shelf, every nook and cranny in every room, there was a pill bottle full of change. Might be 37 cents, might be a couple dollars. Gave me whole new appreciation for the quarter she always gave me when we went to visit her.
Got cross cut saw will travel.
I still have my GRANDFATHERS woodworking tools.
Yep, gonna be needin ’em soon now…
I have an all original Coke machine from the 1940’s that still works just fine. Price is 10 cents for an ice cold Coke.