MY OLD WASHING MACHINE AND MAKING AMERICA GREAT (again)

I’m in the process of getting my old washing machine repaired. The machine in question was bought a long time ago in washing machine years. I bought it specifically because I was drawing water out of a shallow well and needed to economize to the greatest extent possible. I bought what was then a VERY expensive European washing machine that heated its own water and took very little for a full load. I think I paid around $700 for the machine back in 1993 or so. It has failed.

I called the appliance dealer that I bought the machine from and they sent a service technician. Prior to the machine just stopping, it had run perfectly and without error for a long time…well: decades. Suddenly it just stopped.

The diagnosis was the main control board….computer, if you like…had failed. He took the machine, all 170 pounds of it, back to the shop for their diagnosis and to get me a price on the new board. I was told to expect a price around $300 to $400 dollars. A new washer like mine is now $1200 +.

The bad news: the manufacturer has been bought out by the really high end appliance company. The worse news: the computer board no longer is available ANYwhere. My once very expensive, outstanding operating machine is now worthless. It didn’t wear out, it’s just the little, 4" X 6" thin board with little plasticky looking doo-dads fastened to it that has failed and THAT has made the entire machine worthless.

It’s a shame, really. Something as essential to our home, once expensive, yet working cleanly and efficiently, and STILL capable of working efficiently and cleanly is now worthless because of a dumb computer board that has failed.

Of course after 9/11 George Bush told Americans’ to just go on about our business, shopping and buying stuff. I imagine he was thinking about my washing machine even back then. But my washing machine, then nearly ten years old has defied the mercantile odds by continuing to perform its duty without complaint for another sixteen years. And no need for it to stop now, except for that little computer board.

All of which has made me wonder about how we here in this country value things and where exactly our sense of values really are. Everything, every single thing we use in this country now has a short life time, so it seems. Everything is on planned obsolescence, ready to die at some inopportune moment, and the only thing that is certain is that no matter how much money we earn, have saved, or will earn, must be earmarked for spending on some thing or other that will just fail and be made worthless. So we have all this STUFF here in America, stuff that the vast majority of people in other places in the world DON’T have and can’t even imagine having, and all of it is just getting ready to cease working and becoming just more junk to be thrown into a landfill. Valueless. And we are supposed to go out and buy more of the same so the cycle can repeat, in even shorter time than before. The appliance technician said that refrigerator compressors normally have an actual life span of around eight to ten years and often cannot be repaired or replaced after eight. Really.

So, I got really angry about the washing machine’s failure and the failure of the manufacturer to continuing to provide parts for a machine they once touted as worth a lifetime and charged for it. I bought their value and now that approach to buying has become obsolete.

But I think it is a far greater issue than just my washing machine. Everything we consider essential to “modern living” is timed out in such a way so the endless buy this, throw that away cycle continues. And the ‘stuff’ of modern life is valueless. Does this mean the essence of American life is also, VALUELESS?

So I haven’t given up. I found a guy online who had an appliance business but found out that the business he was in was wrong: the mechanicals of appliances don’t fail, it’s the computer boards that fail and he has morphed his business model into repairing those computer boards. And yes, even though my washing machine is now twenty-five years old, he CAN repair the board. He’s going to get his chance and I’ll willingly spend the hundred bucks to save more than a thousand. I consider that to be value.

So at the end of all of this long story about a washing machine, I’m going to suggest that if anyone seriously wants to preach “make America great”, what actually is turning our economy and making us get up and go outside every day needs to be examined. If all we are doing here is trying to knock down enough money to keep ahead of the obsolescence cycle, then I’m going to have to say our America is no better than that.

And if all we aspire to is to get more “stuff” today to throw away tomorrow, then there is no value in that, and the idea of American greatness will forever be nothing more than a valueless illusion.