THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 16, 1994 TAG: 9409160519
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
To some economists, things ought to be built to wear out so as to create a demand for more things. They call it planned obsolescence.
My conviction is that anything that costs more than $100 is supposed to last forever. If it doesn't, it's a failure of capitalism.
Imagine my surprise when our kitchen range, bought in 1964, began to develop arthritis. After only 30 years of service, the stove had proved to be a lemon. I was of a mind to call the Better Business Bureau.
Lemon or not, it had to go, like old love spurned. So we bought one from a firm that has supplied our other appliances and excels in making repairs, which I don't.
My mechanical ineptitude is renowned. Recently when I bought a hammer at the hardware store, the owner almost fell apart laughing, asking, ``Is this the first one?''
At the appliance firm, the salesman was a pleasure to deal with, as were the two deliverymen who shoved the new stove into a space that I'd have sworn it couldn't fit.
It amazed me, too, that the gleaming range was far lighter in weight than the old ironclad it had replaced. I'm still ill at ease in the age of plastics and alloys.
Of even greater concern was an envelope, stuck to the stove, containing a set of instructions labeled: DO YOUR PART.
Do my part, indeed!
It reminded me of the Christmas dawn, with the boys eager to run to the tree, when I discovered that dotty old Santy hadn't included batteries for the electric train.
It seemed I'd done my part by paying three times as much for the new stove as the one purchased in 1964.
Had I been a seer on the order of Henry Ford or Harvey Firestone, I'd have bought TWO stoves in 1964 and stashed one, unused, on the front stoop, with a vase of flowers atop it, as a long-term replacement for the one that just failed.
The do-your-part packet held a flange or hasp or some such gadget along with a cartoon of a stove tipping over under the weight of a child standing on its open door pulled level with the floor.
That the firm was bent on recruiting me, as the last nut in its assembly line, violated the Wagner Act. Shoving its duty onto the consumer showed scant regard for free enterprise. I'd sue if I had a sou.
A repairman, dispatched to my rescue, burst out laughing at my plight. ``Are you a writer?'' he asked, in a sympathetic tone that made me grin.
Working with a power drill, he removed the stove's door, a step quite beyond my ken.
The safety device couldn't be anchored to the tile floor, so he devised an ingenious way to attach it to the wall behind the stove. Da Vinci couldn't have done better.
Working back there, he discovered that the clock on the dash was on the blink. He'd come back with a new part in a few days, he said.
He made it look easy.
But if the Lord had left me to build the Ark, the animals would be swimming yet, two by two. by CNB