This article is classified "Real"
Going camping is like stepping through a time gate to the past. And I am not talking about (wo)man's reunion with nature here; the camping sky is too full of television antennas to make this hypothesis reasonable to the observant thinker who likes to draw conclusions too quickly. Poetry asides, I am talking about fridges. Camping sites are the open air refrigerator museums of the late twentieth century. Nowhere in the far reaching galaxy that I know of is there a diversity of cooling devices reunited in a single location. And thanks to bad marketing, retired brand names and models engineered more than five decades ago are still humming and cooling. Compared to our aesthetically challenged modern refrigerator (rectangular box with rectangular doors) the old fridges (of the kind we've been used to see dropped on the head(s) of villain cartoon characters) have long become marvels of industrial design. Their round shapes, massive handles and encased freezer compartment can't help but give shivers to the over mediated westerner. Then why buy new expensive fridges with low lifespans when we can get hoopy looking ones with a je ne sais quoi of cartoon nostalgia for the price of a second hand Timex Sinclair 1000? Okay, the new technology is more ecological. In theory, at least. But let's put aside global concerns and concentrate on what we're really worried about here: buying a new -- or old, in that case -- fridge. So why buy a used cool fridge? They don't have warranties any longer. They may have lived out too many KWhours to be of any reliability. You may only find them at unhealthy second hand appliance discount stores, in an eccentric collector's attic or at an obscure flea market... at your own risks. Or you can always attempt to get one from a camping site but most of them have been repainted in disgusting wall paint colors and encased in hand-made sheds by workaholic amateur campers who cannot endure the serenity of nature. Things don't look up too well, uh? Maybe I'll have to write something one day on how not-to-become an auto-defrost bourgeois... So, if buying a new used fridge isn't really into your reach right now, it doesn't really matter. You can always content yourself idling around a camping site, glancing at the freezing marvels. But don't be surprised if a camper glances back at you suspisciously, they're just not used to have their refrigerators looked upon as museum pieces.