Long live the blender and beer fridge

Older appliances built to last

Faithful blender

One of the privileges of growing older is getting to lament the overall quality of life compared to times past.

Those of us of a certain age remember hearing our parents telling us how far they walked to school (uphill, in the snow, etc.) and how it molded their character. To be sure, unlike Williamson County students last week, they never got out of school because of wind. Come to think of it, neither did I.

I tell stories of cable-less and remote control-less TV. Fighting — I mean, negotiating — with my brother over who would turn the dial to another channel (one of three) helped make me the person I am today.

My grown children love to talk about the little TV with the built-in VCR we would take on trips. Placed on top of a cooler between the driver and passenger seats, held steady with bungee cords, movies could be watched until we arrived at the beach.

Kids today who have the dropdown screens (with Bluetooth accessibility) in their parents’ decked-out mini-vans or SUVs don’t know how good they have it, do they?

My rant today, however, is more about products, and their unfortunate decline. I know you love your iPhone, but how often do you have to replace it because of (alleged) updates or because it has stopped working? How does that compare to the phone that was once wired into your walls?

And how often were calls dropped when talking on that wall-attached phone? Did you ever once utter the words, “Can you hear me now?”

What’s the average life of a refrigerator today? When we bought our Brentwood house in 2001, we bought the fridge from the owners. It was a few years old, and it was white.

Nine-ish years ago, that refrigerator was still working fine, but we were making some updates and decided to replace existing appliances with stainless ones. The white refrigerator went to the garage and was christened the “beer fridge.” (Just a random name.) It doesn’t look that great at 30 or so years old, but it keeps doing its job.

Beer fridge no beauty, but still works 30 years later

After two years, the icemaker in the new refrigerator started freezing over. The ice cubes were frozen together in clumps, and I would have to break them up with an ice pick for more ice to be produced. Needless to say, that was not optimal.

A repair guy came and supposedly fixed it. Six months later when it started doing the same thing again, we called and asked him to make a return visit. He told us this was a common problem with this brand and advised us to not spend more money trying to fix it.

Not long after that, the rubber seal on one of the French doors became dislodged and we had to always close the other door first. Then the handle on the freezer came off.

We lived with it until a couple of year ago. Since it still worked in spite of the defects, we moved it to the garage alongside the beer fridge (because you really cannot have too many refrigerators) and got another one for the house, with a working icemaker.

I took the opportunity to remind my family I grew up in a home where we made ice from trays, but at this point in my life, I believed I had earned a working icemaker.

Washers and driers? Don’t get me started, unless you want me to tell you about the Maytag machines my parents gave Susan and me when we bought our first house in Little Rock in 1985. They (the washer and drier, not my parents) made the move with us to Middle Tennessee in 1997, and finally gave it up after 21 years of service. (The washer still had some life in it but was getting slow.)

I believe we are now on our third washer and second drier since those originals expired circa 2006. We have tried front- loading and top-loading; agitating and non-agitating; and digital controls that play songs at the end of the cycle.

I kid you not when I tell you one of the washers vibrated so much, we could feel it in our upstairs bedroom, far removed from the downstairs laundry room.

When we bought the most recent one, we bought the most basic and least expensive we could find, considering the life span of our most recent ones.

Finally, let me tell you about the blender, pictured above, that still works beautifully. Susan brought it into our marriage, and she estimates she had owned it about five years at the time. Our 39th anniversary will be this August, so you can do the math.

She also contributed a ten-year-old toaster to our union, which lasted until about a year ago (the toaster, not our marriage, which is still going strong, thank you). It still worked, but some of our family members said it was a fire hazard and I decided not to argue about it.

Some years ago, Susan’s parents gave us a new blender for Christmas. We had not asked for it, but they thought the old one was showing wear (which it was) and could not last much longer.

Turns out it outlasted the one they gave us and continues its run today. It, like the beer fridge, might not be the most aesthetically pleasing item you have ever seen, but I don’t need it to be. It does the work of a blender.

I hate to be one of those people mouthing off about how they don’t make ‘em like they used to.

But you tell me. Do they?