When you want that thing but they don’t make it anymore

Some time ago I was in line to check out at CVS and was standing beside a display of electronic gizmos when I came across an iPhone charging cable that lights up. It looks like a striped green snake and when you’re charging your phone, little lights go dancing through it like green fireflies racing in single file.

When the lights stop moving and the cord goes dark, your phone is charged. It’s fast and efficient and you don’t have to keep checking your phone to know when it reaches 100%.

Recently, I decided to buy another one, seeing as how we have two iPhones that sometimes need charged at the same time, so I went back to CVS to buy a new cable and was told, “We don’t have those anymore.” So I went to another CVS across town, but they didn’t have them either. “I don’t think we sell those now,” I was told.

I moved on to Big Lots, where I was dismayed to find no lighted phone charging cables at all. However, since I was already there, I went back to the lawn and garden section to buy some wicker chairs I had seen there previously to replace our rusty wrought iron deck furniture, but alas, they only had one remaining chair. “No,” I was told, “we won’t be getting any more of them.”

So it was on to Busy Beaver, where they had stacks and stacks of wicker patio chairs, but when I tried to buy four, I was told they only came in sets and I had to buy a table, too. I didn’t see any tables there and I didn’t want a table anyway, so I moved on, coming home a broken man with neither a lighted iPhone charging cord nor a set of wicker chairs.

I can now state unequivocally that not being able to buy what you want is becoming a disturbing trend.

You see, a few weeks earlier, I needed some plastic fencing. I had several sections I bought a few years ago but needed several more. I went everywhere looking for it, but no one around here sells it any longer. Not even Lowe’s, where I bought the original fencing.  

A friend of mine bought some small tables to go with his porch furniture, but when he went back to buy another one, well, guess what?

I could go on, but I’m sure you get the point.

Now I’m not anti-progress, but it makes me wonder why any company would stop making good, solid products that people bought in the past and may actually want to buy more of in the future. Don’t they want to keep making money? I mean, think about the original Ford Mustang. How many millions of people bought one when it first came out in 1964? I was only 14 then so obviously I didn’t get one, but maybe I’d want one today.

Could I buy it? No. Why not? They don’t make it any longer.

It also makes it difficult for people who advocate for buying locally and thwarts those of us who try to support our hometown businesses. When stores in our town don’t have what we want – or have stopped selling something we bought there in the past – it forces us to patronize the two businesses that do still offer such products where I live.

One is named Walmart, and I try to avoid that place like the plague whenever I can.

The other one is called Amazon.com.

That’s why, sadly, after striking out at every local store that used to sell this or that, I ended up holding my nose and buying four new patio chairs from Sam Walton’s giant neighborhood-killing mega-mart, which was more than happy to sell me four chairs without an accompanying table.

Then I came home and ordered two lighted phone charging cables from Amazon.com. With my Prime membership, I’ll have them delivered tomorrow totally free of charge...and right to my front door.