This is my toaster.
It is a Toastess Model 202, circa 1949, made in Montreal, Canada. I bought is at a garage sale in 1986 for $5.00. It’s completly manual, with no thermostat or on/off switch, so you have to watch that your toast doesn’t burn. In a way, that’s a good thing in that it requires you to be mindful. You plug it in and it’s on, and you pull the plug and it’s off.
What’s really impressive about this toaster is that, at about 60 years of age, it still works. I’ve had several pop-up toasters over the years, all of them now in a landfill somewhere.... *sigh*. If an element burns out, or a thermostat malfunctions, no one will even try to fix it because new toasters are so cheap... And they will always break down, so you will always have to buy a new one.
As we head into 2009, I am more and more mindful of my ecological footprint. So I’m quite thankful for my simple, ancient, fully-functional toaster. With luck, it will last another 60 years, and there will be one more thing in my life that I won’t have to throw away.
Happy New Year!
