When I left home for graduate school in 1981, my parents’ next door neighbor asked me if I would need a toaster. I really wasn’t sure that I would, but I said “Yes,” and she gave me one. I believe it was a General Electric toaster, and it had a shiny metal exterior with crisp, well-defined edges, not like my family’s old-fashioned one, with rounded edges. Just a couple years ago, more than thirty years later, that toaster finally gave up the ghost. It was a sad day. My daily reminder of the sweet woman who gave it to me would be gone forever.
Conveniently, the toaster’s final failure occurred in December, so I asked my sister to give me a toaster for Christmas. She came through and provided me with a two-slice Oster with a black plastic exterior. As I said, this was two years ago. In recent months, the lever for lowering the bread into the toaster has gotten progressively more hesitant, and now it no longer pops up. You have to drag the lever back up, or your toast will be converted into charcoal. How can such a simple mechanism fail so quickly? So, I get 30 years of service out of my first (American made) toaster. My second (made in China)? Two years. And this isn’t our first experience of this kind. At some point in the past, hubby decided that my old two-slicer was not making enough toast, and so he got an Oster 4-slicer. Again, that one lasted two years before it mysteriously ceased to work. And so we dragged my old one back out again. Reliability has its virtues.
After this most recent toaster failure, hubby took upon himself the task of trying to find a toaster, made in America, which might last for more than two years. It was harder than you might imagine. Make the jump for the rest of the story…
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Hubby had a hard time trying to find a toaster made in the US. What he found is that, unless you want one of those models with a conveyer belt that restaurants use, there aren’t any. Nor are any made in Europe. They all come from China.
So hubby decided to try another tack. He started looking for reconditioned old toasters. He found a guy in New York who does just that, and he ordered a mid-twentieth century toaster with a replaced electrical cord. I didn’t bother asking any questions about it because a toaster is a toaster. We’d have yet another mid-twentieth century modern item in our house to go along with all the others.
Well, the toaster arrived yesterday. Wanting to make some toast for lunch, I opened the box today in order to pull it out and use it. There, staring me in the face, was the original toaster from my parents’ house! The toaster of my childhood! It had the exact same rounded edges and the three loops embossed on its side. The handle looks different, and the cord is definitely different, but otherwise, it looks like the same model. I’m about as happy as this woman:
I suppose when you get to be my age, you never know when some random object will bring you back to a moment in your past. For Marcel Proust, it was a cookie. For me it was a toaster.
And if that weren’t enough, today would have been my mother’s 91st birthday.
On to the comments!
Top Comments (February 16, 2017):
From your humble diarist:
This comment from imhumanru asserts that the inert Republican leadership in Congress refusing to investigate the Trump/Russia connection will own whatever disasters Trump eventually perpetrates. From Jen Hayden’s recommended post on E. J. Dionne’s WaPo op-ed this morning.
kurious gives a thorough rundown of how, once the hacking of the DNC e-mails by the Russians became public knowledge, Republicans in Congress refused even to condemn the action in a bipartisan act of solidarity against foreign espionage, and in fact happily used the the hacked information to their advantage in the election campaign. From PiRierran’s recommended post on the implications of the intelligence leaks exposing Trump’s Russian connections.
Highlighted by anon004:
This comment by Journeyman that gives the ultimate breakdown of Trump’s qualities. From Jen Hayden’s recommended post on the call for impeachment by a retired Republican judge.
Highlighted by ArcticStones:
This comment by Proginoskes, regarding the identity of the mole in the NSC.
Top Mojo (February 15, 2017):
Top Mojo is courtesy of mik! Click here for more on how Top Mojo works.
Top Photos (February 15, 2017):
Tonight’s picture quilt is courtesy of jotter!