Rantings and Ravings

By Sun Advocate

I needed some nuts and bolts for a project I am working on. Since we have thousands of them scattered in various places throughout the house, I figured I could find what I needed instead of running out and buying some.
I had looked in all the usual spots, not finding the right type when I remembered a small blue little box we had brought from my mother-in-laws house after she died many years back. It has sat on a shelf in my work room since then.
I pulled it down and went through all the little drawers. I found what I needed, just not quite enough. But there were so many other odds and ends in those drawers that I got lost in thinking about my mother-in-law and the projects she had acquired all those little items for.
There were fuses and picture hangers. There were small hinges and weird little screws with rubber on them. There was a drawer full of beads and wire and washers. Wires, alligator clips and electrical caps also filled the spaces.
She wasn’t much for trying to fix many things herself, so its hard to say who and why these things ended up there.
I am a fixer and will scrounge the entire house to locate something that will work, rather than go out and buy something. That comes from the days when money was tight and my stuff, although cheap, was all I had.
Nowadays it seems like for most of us it is easier to throw away anything that is broken and get a new one. Manufactures have helped that process along, making everything, seemingly disposable.
I remember when getting a TV was a big deal. Everyone in the neighborhood would come and check it out. The TV had tubes that kept it functioning. When one went bad, you took it down and replaced it.
Our local hardware store had a self testing machine so my dad would pull all the suspect tubes out and test them one by one. It was a pain and sometimes we went without TV for a week waiting for my dad to have time to try and fix the thing. But you knew that it was the only one you had and so you fixed it until it couldn’t be fixed anymore.
Nowadays TV’s are as disposable as yesterday’s newspapers. When the new technology comes out, wait a year for prices to drop and then replace what you have. And if yours is not big enough, buy a bigger one.
Does anyone even fix TV’s any more? If it’s out of warranty, I think your money ahead to throw it away and replace it.
Back to my project. I finally had to go to the hardware store to get the right nuts and bolts. I bought just enough to get the job done.
And after I finish the project I will sit back and watch a little TV on my six year old 24″ screen set that doesn’t even have AV ports for a DVD player.