I needed something they didn’t make anymore. It was a hinge of the type called a 2 1/2-inch parliament butt.
I suspected they didn’t make it anymore. Once they find out they are making something you might need one of these days, they immediately call the factory and tell them not to make it anymore.
The hardware salesman looked grave when shown the broken 2 1/2-inch parliament butt which I wanted to replace. “They don’t make that anymore,” he said.
Was there something similar that they did still make?
“How about a 3-inch parliament butt?” he suggested.
If it could be fitted onto an interior window shutter with very thin wood where the screws went, I said, I would take it. I took it. At home, the screws turned out to be too broad. They split the wood. Removing the shutter, I went to a mill for a replacement.
The salesman examined my shutter with contempt. “They don’t make that anymore,” he said. He sold me a complete set of the very latest shutters. They were so heavy that they pulled out of the screw holes while being installed, fell outward and shattered the window frame.
The lumber-company salesman looked at my shattered window with absolute delight. “And you want a replacement for this window? You must be kidding.”
“I assume they don’t make it anymore.”
He smiled in triumph and sold me the new window they were making that very day, which was so big that the old window space had to be enlarged to receive it. While cutting open the house with a power saw, I accidentally sawed through a supporting beam, and a large part of the second floor fell into the dining room.
“I need a jack strong enough to raise my second floor out of the dining room without, at the same time, sending my dining room crashing into the cellar,” I told the salesman of construction equipment.
“I know exactly what you want,” he said. “It’s the lightweight second-floor elevating jack, Model 1322, but I got bad news for you, pal. They don’t make it anymore.”
There was nothing to do but buy a brand-new second floor, so I had a second-floor salesman come look at my old one. He said they didn’t make that kind anymore, and sold me the very latest thing instead.
With a little help from the neighbors, I almost got it into place, but it was so much heavier than the old second floor that when the weight began to settle it pulled the roof down through the attic, which collapsed the attic floor, which fell onto the dining room, the living room, the kitchen and the television set.
When the family arrived home they were not amused. “What’s been going on here?” they asked.
I told them I was replacing the broken 2 1/2-inch parliament butt on the dining-room-window shutter and had run into complications. They said I had better do something about the house right away as there was likely to be rain.
“Relax,” I said, “they probably don’t make rain anymore.”
The house salesman I saw about replacing the house said they didn’t make houses like mine anymore, and showed me a mobile home which they were making that week.
When I loaded the family aboard to set out upon the mobile life, the children, who were vast adolescents, said it was too small and refused to go. There was no time to argue and we had to leave them behind, but I told my wife not to worry because we would get some replacements.
“They don’t make that kind anymore,” she said.
After driving for several years, my wife turned off the television set one day and said mobile living was all right, but it would be better if there were some places to be driving to.
“They don’t make them anymore,” I told her.
One day as the house was driving along a highway by an ocean, a hinge on the refrigerator door broke. “Let’s drive to a hardware store and replace that hinge,” she said.
I ordered her to get out of the house, aimed it at the ocean and jumped free as it went down for the third time. “Why did you drown the house?” asked my wife as I came ashore.
“A magnificent gesture,” I declared.
“They don’t make them anymore,” she said.