They just don't make 'em like they used to

I know a 70-year-old horse trainer in Oregon who still boasts about the John Deere tractor he bought when he was twenty. 

It still runs well except for only making one lap around the area before the battery dies.

Jim, the trainer, says he already paid for the one battery and doesn't want to buy a new one that will go dead because "that's what new things do."

I think he is right, they just don't make things like they used to. 

At home the fella and I have more movies on VHS than DVD and more music on cassette tapes than iTunes. 

We still buy vinyl records whenever we can find them. 

We recently acquired a Subaru as old as I am. So far, it's proven to be more of a champion than my 2000 Dodge, which gets finicky and tries to kill me if I'm not paying attention. 

My guy's vintage Honda CB motorcycle still runs strong, and looks great, even though it's nearly as old as both of us combined.

As a little kid, I distinctly remember happily yanking the shiny, gray tape out of a Disney movie on VHS.

I was always amazed when Dad would wind the tape back up, tell me not to do that, put it in the machine and it still played.

Now, when DVDs and CDs get scratched, we have to spend money getting them fixed or buy a new one.

We are all terrified of dropping our precious cellphones, but does anyone remember the incident where Russell Crowe, the Australian actor, attacked a hotel concierge with a land-line telephone?

I'm not condoning beatings of hotel staff by famous people, but that had to be one sturdy phone. I have yet to see the iPhone you could successfully attack another person with.

In my mind, automobiles like my mom's old Suburban used to be built tank-style from a metric ton of Detroit steel. Now cars seem to have more plastic parts than metal ones.

Chainsaws have gone the way of cars, too.

I began learning to run a chainsaw with a heavy, old orange Husqvarna that weighed almost more than I could stand to pack around the woods for a day. But when I traded it for a newfangled Stihl made lighter by plastic parts, I discovered the Husqvarna's heft was part of its charm. 

The weight of all that metal actually helped the chain pull through logs, whereas the Stihl's chain would stop spinning, the saw would die and I would have to wrestle the bar from whatever I'd been cutting without bending it.

I know, I know, it's the natural progression of things. But who decided that our American "consumer culture" would function better if things broke more often?

I don't believe being a consumer means that we can't purchase something one time and have it last.

Those things are out there, I just know it.

Shantra Hannibal is the health and education reporter for the Columbia Basin Herald. She is also a former firefighter and probably knows more about chainsaws than the rest of the newsroom combined.