{"id":604,"date":"2004-09-26T16:08:00","date_gmt":"2004-09-26T16:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2004\/09\/26\/604\/"},"modified":"2004-09-26T16:08:00","modified_gmt":"2004-09-26T16:08:00","slug":"604","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=604","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

PAINT CAN BLUES (antique white, actually):<\/span> You know what\u2019s really a drag? When you start getting older and one day you have to go out and buy something or do something that you haven\u2019t done in quite a while. You remember there were certain stores or places to go where you could get what you need. But those places are either gone, or they don\u2019t have the stuff any longer. There\u2019s a whole different procedure for getting what you want, and you\u2019ve got to learn how to do it all over again.<\/p>\n

This has happened to me over and over since I passed the age of 30 (which was quite a while ago). My latest crisis involves interior paint. I rent an apartment, and painting the walls is pretty much the landlord\u2019s thing. But there are a couple of dings and old nail holes that I wanted to touch up myself, so I went to Sears looking for a small can of antique white interior latex semi-gloss. Last time I bought paint was maybe 15 years ago, when things were basically the same as when I was a kid. You went to Sears or Two Guys or some other rough-and-ready kind of place, and you wandered around through rows and rows of paint cans, looking at the labels for the shade of color nearest to what you had in mind. This morning I went out to get a small can of antique white, figuring things would be just the same as they always were in the paint department.<\/p>\n

Sorry, Jimbo, think again<\/span>. The world has changed. I burned up a few gallons of non-replaceable petroleum fuel driving to Home Depot, K-Mart, Sears and Target (which doesn\u2019t carry paint at all), and was appalled by the lack of variety regarding paint. About all one could find was bright white (not the antique white that I needed), and primer. What the heck? Where were all the different tones of blue and brown and green and red of my youth? I gave up and went home, confused and dejected.<\/p>\n

Only later did it strike me. You now have to buy the primer and ask someone to mix in the color tints right there in the store. Oh, so that\u2019s what that big counter in the Home Depot paint section is for. I thought that kind of thing was only for people with specialized tastes like sea foam or apricot. But no, even if you want good old forest green or fire-engine red or antique white, you\u2019ve got to ask to get it mixed. OK, that\u2019s the system now. Why didn\u2019t anyone tell me about this change? Why wasn\u2019t this in the newspapers?<\/p>\n

OK, I\u2019ll get with the new paint program. But what still bothers me is that there are a gazillion<\/span> stores out there that make it incredibly easy to buy clothes and towels and books and CDs and camcorders and DVD players and premium chocolate. And of course the web sites only add to the mix. For stuff like this, you have lots of variety, with plenty of choices as to price and quality. But if you need a new table lamp, or a set of tires, or a small can of touch-up paint, or a new watch band, or wool mittens, or a sofa cover, or a bicycle tire pump, or a needle and thread, or you want to get some new heels on a perfectly good pair of shoes … for that kind of stuff, better days have passed.<\/p>\n

It seems to me that over the past 25 years, the skin-deep stuff like clothes and towels and electronic toys have taken over the stores, while the basic stuff like tools and repair \/ replacement items have gotten harder and harder to find and to buy. Maybe this reflects the throw-away mentality that we have in America these days. You don\u2019t get new heels on shoes, you just get new shoes. You don\u2019t replace a watch band, just get a new watch. You don\u2019t re-paint an old cabinet, just throw it out. When your shirt rips, don\u2019t sew it, just throw it.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know. A lot of things have gotten better since I was a kid, and maybe the new way of buying paint is actually better; it arguably gives you more choices as to colors (although I\u2019d rather just grab my antique white and pay for it, and not wait for the mixing guy to get around to me). Admittedly, places like the Home Depot and Staples make it easier to get a lot of nuts-and-bolts stuff that you\u2019d have trouble finding when I was young. But still, the overall trend towards fashion and throw-away convenience in our American marketplace makes me wonder about our values and our inner fortitude. Right now there are some very tough people in places like Indonesia and Afghanistan and Tunisia and Yemen with designs on our rich land. Will people sipping lattes from Starbucks, wearing Polo knits and shorts they just got from Kohls, be ready for them?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PAINT CAN BLUES (antique white, actually): You know what\u2019s really a drag? When you start getting older and one day you have to go out and buy something or do something that you haven\u2019t done in quite a while. You remember there were certain stores or places to go where you could get what you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}