Crazy Eddie Tech
Sam Aurelius Milam III
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Several years ago, my sister's refrigerator failed. Her husband bought
a new one for her. I thought that the new one was too complicated but, beyond that, I didn't give the matter much thought. A year or so later,
my mother's refrigerator failed. I still didn't give the matter much
thought. She got a refrigerator repairman to come and fix the thing.
He and I had an interesting conversation. He told me that he'd once
seen a refrigerator that had been bought by the owner's grandmother.
When he saw the refrigerator, it was 80 years old and it was still working.
I started to give the matter some thought.
During the 1950s and 1960s, we expected that a refrigerator would last indefinitely, maybe a lifetime. Things have changed. The refrigerator repairman told me of some comments that he'd overheard at a company where he was being
trained to repair their refrigerators. At a staff meeting, the engineers
claimed that they could design the company's refrigerators to last for 60
years. The manager in charge of the meeting said that was great and
then instructed them to go back to work and design the refrigerators to last
seven years.
At the time that my mother's refrigerator was being repaired, I was using an old refrigerator that I'd bought for a few dollars from a man alongside of the road. It was rusty, noisy, and it leaked water on the floor, but it did an excellent job of maintaining the correct temperatures in both
compartments. So, I tolerated the noise, ignored the rust, and stepped
around the puddle on the floor. About a year after my mother's refrigerator
was repaired, she died and I inherited her refrigerator. I got rid
of my old one and moved hers to my place. After I started using it,
I noticed that it had a problem. The compressor would start and then
immediately stop. It would do that repeatedly before it finally continued
running. I used it anyway, because it maintained the correct temperatures
in both compartments, it didn't leak water on the floor, and my old one was
already gone.
A few months after my mother's death, my sister's new refrigerator failed. One of its fancy features, the ice dispenser, stopped working. The ice
dispenser had never been entirely reliable and it still isn't but, one day,
it failed completely. She got a refrigerator repairman to fix it.
He and I had an interesting conversation. During that conversation,
I told him about the compressor in my refrigerator starting and stopping.
He said that such behavior indicated that complete failure was imminent and
that it wasn't worth fixing the thing. He recommended that I buy a
new one. I asked him what brand he would recommend. He said that
Whirlpool had been the most successful at trying to maintain a high level
of product quality. In retrospect, I can see that it was a carefully
worded reply. That is, he didn't actually say that any brand is of
particularly high quality.
My sister and I went to Lowe's to buy a new refrigerator. The salesman asked me what I wanted. I told him that I wanted a refrigerator but that I didn't want one that talked to me, or that had a computer in it, or
that had internet access, or a TV screen on the front, or a complicated control
panel, or that eavesdropped on my conversations. He seemed amused but
we actually found a somewhat simple refrigerator. It was a Whirlpool.
After it was delivered, I put my freezer and refrigerator thermometers in
it. I noticed right away that the tem- 
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