COLUMBUS _ The phone rang
and Buddy ran to check the caller
I.D.
``It’s Uncle Chet!’’ he announced.
``Answer it,’’ I said from the living
room, where I was tinkering with an
old amplifier.
The boy said hello, and I waited.
``He says you can’t buy a waffle
iron in Utica.’’
``What?’’
``An American-made waffle iron,’’
said Buddy, half into the phone, half
to me.
``Oh.’’
``He says he tried three stores.’’
``Here, let me talk to him.’’ I took
the cordless handset.
``Did you know you can’t buy an
American-made waffle iron anymore?’’
Uncle Chet
announced.
``I thought you
had a waffle iron,’’
I said.
``That’s Teflon-
coated, and
it smells when it
warms up,’’ he said.
``Alice hates it, so
we thought we’d
get an old-fashioned,
cast-iron
one.’’
``And use it on
the stove?’’
``Right, like
Grandma used to.’’
``They’re the
best kind,’’ I said.
``They still
make ’em, but not
America,’’ he said,
``and I’m not buying anything made
in China.’’
``What do you have against the
Chinese?’’ I asked.
``Nothing,’’ he said. ``It’s those
traitors who moved our factories
over there that I’m mad at.’’
``That, I agree with,’’ I said.
``So I’m not buying anything from
a company that pretends to be American
but has its factory overseas,’’ he
said. ``The only way we’re going to
bring jobs back here is to refuse to
buy anything not made here, and I
mean food, clothing, Sheetrock, you
name it. If it isn’t made in the USA,
I’m not putting a dollar toward it.’’
``Great idea, but you’re going to go
barefoot this winter,’’ I said.
``No. New Balance sells American-
made shoes.’’
``They do?’’
``Yes. And Lodge is our last castiron
cookware maker, but they don’t
make waffle irons,’’ Uncle Chet said.
``Then get a used one, off eBay,’’ I
suggested.
``Now there’s an idea,’’ he said.
``Hey, that’s an excellent idea.’’
``Thank you.’’
``Now, how do we get everyone to
buy American?’’ he asked.
``Get Obama to do it,’’ I said, ``although
right now, he’s up to his neck
in health care reform.’’
``We need ‘wealth care’ reform
even more than health care reform,’’
Uncle Chet said, ``and the way to do
it is to bring good-paying jobs here.
Manufacturing jobs; union jobs; jobs
with benefits and security like in
first-world countries _ like we used
to have in our heyday in the fifties.’’
``Those were the days,’’ I said.
``When we led the world in manufacturing,
workers were middleclass.
Two parents didn’t have to
work; one could support a family.
But the upper class didn’t like that
and launched a class war,’’ Uncle
Chet said. ``They moved their factories
to cheap labor markets, fattened
their pockets and the American wage
slave was sold down the river, where
his kind of people don’t get jobs with
security, pension and benefits.’’
``There’s a ring of truth there,’’ I
said.
``All I’m saying is let’s fight back.
Don’t buy anything from economic
traitors. Buy American, wherever
possible.’’
``They’re going to say you’re
loony.’’
``Either we act now, while the
American consumer still has clout,
or the middle class is finished.’’
``You’re going to run up against
the `free trade’ argument _ how our
industries want to sell abroad, so we
have to let others sell here,’’ I said.
``That argument is baloney,
because we don’t make much of
anything anymore,’’ Uncle Chet
said. ``Today, I had money in my
wallet and I was ready to spend it
on an American-made waffle iron.
But from coast to coast, not a single
American foundry makes them, and
no one’s going to until we demand
it.’’
___
Cooperstown News Bureau Reporter
Tom Grace is traveling with his Uncle
Chet, who he says is imaginary. Grace’s
column appears every other week.
