BayBelle's Fridge

Aunt BayBelle cooks for the holidays like everybody is still alive. It was just the two of us and we had turkey and dressing, collard greens and cornbread (not from Jiffy mix, thank you very much), ham, string beans, deviled eggs, devil's food cake, pound cake, macaroni and cheese, homemade fudge, and my absolute Christmas favorite, oxtails.

After dinner, she takes all the leftover food down to basement, to put into "the good freezer." I've seen this refrigerator ever since I can remember. The upstairs kitchen might have an ice-in-door model in avocado, but that Philco was always in the basement, trusted to cool what remained of a family feast.

I asked her about it. "That thing?" she asked, "Mama brought it up from Alabama. That's the only refrigerator we ever had growing up, save for the ice man. I have to defrost it now and then, but it's still running."

The refrigerator is at least 60 years old. It's outlasted three newer fridges and shows no sign of quitting. They really don't make things like they used to.

I'm thinking of the auto industry, and them whining about competition from Japan. I believe the automakers know how to make a car that lasts 20 years. But there's no profit in that. I believe American workers want to do their best. But I remember reading Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, and how the owners of the meat packing plant would slowly increase the speed at which workers processed meat until they hit the sweet spot that maximized profits and cost the least number of worker's lives and body parts. I can see Ford and GM doing the same thing to assembly lines, resulting in cars that fall apart when you drive them off the lot.

How much money do rich people need? When did profit take the place of quality and people? No wonder companies are going out of business.