Andy Rooney_ 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit - Andy Rooney [75]
Around the office I work in, they changed the paper towels in the men’s room several months ago. The new ones are nowhere near as good as the brand they had for years, and it takes three to do what one of the old ones would do. Somebody in the company decided it would look good if they bought cheaper paper towels. It is just incredible that smart people decide to save money in such petty ways.
I had a friend whose father owned a drugstore in a small town in South Carolina. It was beautifully kept and well run. My friend’s father was an experienced druggist who knew the whole town’s medical history. During the 1950s, one of those big chain drugstores moved in selling umbrellas, plastic beach balls, tote bags and dirty books, and that was the end of the good, honest, little drugstore.
We are fond of repeating familiar old sayings like “It’s quality not quantity that matters,” but we don’t buy as though we believe that very often. We take the jumbo size advertised at 20 percent off—no matter what the quality is. I’m glad I’m not in the business of making anything, because it must be heartbreaking for the individual making something the best way he knows how to see a competitor come in and get rich making the same thing with cheap materials and shoddy workmanship.
America’s great contribution to mankind has been the invention of mass production. We showed the world how to make things quickly, inexpensively and in such great numbers that even people who didn’t have a lot of money could afford them. Automobiles were our outstanding example for a long time. We made cars that weren’t Rolls-Royces but they were good cars, and just about everyone could scrape together the money to buy one.
Somewhere, somehow, we went wrong. One by one, the good carmakers were driven out of business by another company making a cheaper one. I could have cried when Packard went out of business, but there were thirty other automobile makers that went the same way, until all that was left was General Motors, American Motors, Chrysler and Ford. And in a few years we may not have all of them.
We found a way to mass-assemble homes after World War II. We started slapping them up with cinder block and plywood, and it seemed good because a lot of people who never could afford a home before were able to buy them.
They didn’t need carpenters who were master craftsmen to build those homes, and young people working on them never really got to know how to do anything but hammer a nail.
We have a lot to be proud of, but there is such a proliferation of inferior products on the market now that it seems as though we have to find a way to go in another direction. The term “Made by hand” is still the
Signed by Hand 161
classiest stamp you can put on a product and we need more of them. We need things made by people who care more about the quality of what they’re making than the money they’re going to get selling it.
It’s our own fault and no amount of good government, bad government, more government or less government is going to turn us around. The only way we’re going to get started in the right direction again is to stop buying junk.
Signed by Hand
The other night I was sitting looking at a brick wall in the living room of some friends. It has become popular to tear the plaster off old brick walls of houses in downtown areas of big cities, and leave the mellow, irregular shape of old red brick exposed. It adds warmth and charm to a room.
The house was something like 125 years old and the wall must have gone up with the house. Many of the bricks weren’t perfectly oblong, being handmade, and you could see that the bricklayer had a problem getting the whole thing plumb and square.
It was a great brick wall though,