and it was pretty warm out. But what got me really heated up was the disappointment with a chance to use the new push broom I had found for $20. "Made in USA" was blazoned on the handle, but after trying to move a very small amount of debris with it, I gave it up in disgust....looks like some of the things we make in America now, are just so much crap.
Twenty dollars isn't yet chump change, to me. Twenty dollars is still a few boxes of cereal, or new, store-bought underwear and socks for one child's year, or a week's worth of new-to-me clothes from the SallyAnn Thrift Store's 50%-off day. If I decide I can part with $20 for a push broom, it ought to make my chores easier, and not act like a featherlight decorative item that threatens to separate with every stroke.
I was thinking, as I shoveled chicken smuts and perspired, that I know people, and know of people, who collect very old tools just for the sake of displaying them. Some are even what decorators call "primitive" or "make-do," owing to their being made obviously by hand, from whatever odds and ends came to hand. And I heft these things with an effort: the scythe and cradle used in cutting hay hangs on the outdoor porch at my parents' house, an ominous kind of awning if you sit in a certain chair at the table. I have seen old kitchen knives and cleavers, and hand egg beaters, posted on a kitchen soffit, and thought of how hazardous it might be to cook and bake with them hanging overhead. Most people who appreciate old things made right, pay good money for them, and don't even use them...but they could! With a bit of oiling, sharpening, or straightening, most of these old tools that still balance right in the hands could still do what they were made to do - work.
Which brings me around to what things are made of, and to what people are made of, anymore. Watch this.
That twenty-dollar broom, made of lightest-weight plastic, with a handle that unscrews from the broom head, is a damn proletariat broom. A proletariat broom was made in an American factory(possibly of materials brought in from elsewhere), by workers who belong to a union and who get paid vacation and paid sick days, and a guaranteed number of hours with a guaranteed wage based on union negotiators with political clout. All that has been won for so many American workers, I deem, is extremely undervalued, and even unappreciated, by most of them. I cannot imagine the people who made this kind of broom going home and using one like it to sweep the floor there. But they can countenance producing this substandard product, because hey, it's a job.
Somehow, I think, if this were still a constitutional republic - in practice, I'm talking about! - you could pay thirty dollars for a thick, wooden handle that fit snugly into a broom head of tough nylon fibers, and it would last you 'til you gave up tending chickens and then some. If the handle broke, you could get it replaced, and use the old one for a walking stick, or a two-legged ox goad ( he! he! he!)...and fewer trees would be killed to make brooms that worked harder and lasted longer, than are killed now by the noxious poisons of 'plants' that recycle plastic. (When people try to tell me how recycling plastic is 'green', I see red and feel like adding some black and blue to the scene for good measure.)
What I need is a republican push broom. Made from American hardwood, by someone who knows what a broom needs to do because he sweeps his own floors, too. I want to be able to clean the dust out of my chicken coop, and whack a burglar over the head with it. Something sturdy is worth alot more than $20 to me, and I'd gladly campaign to all my friends and acquaintances to go and buy one of those brooms. The broommaker would make money and hire more broommakers, we'd all be toning our biceps and waistlines, and together we could clean up this sagging, deflated, totally redeemable country.
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