Well, if you haven’t already heard, Brunswick, manufacturer of a number of brands of boats has decided to stop producing one of its premier brands:  Maxum.  They’re still selling the ones they’ve already manufactured and will support the brand until the end of the warrantee period, but as of January 2010, Maxum will take its place with Oldsmobile, TeleKing, and Cord.  Given the state of the boating industry, this isn’t a stunning surprise, but it’s still a sad turn of events.  The other tidbit I’ve just recently heard is that Garmin is acquiring the struggling Raymarine, so that trusted name in electronics will cease to appear.  Since Garmin has proved itself to be a producer of high quality electronics, we can be sure that we’ll still have excellent options available to us.

All of this doesn’t scare me nearly as much as the wholesale disappearance of things that are made in the U.S.  At the risk of sounding like a xenophobe, let me say that I really worry about our growing dependence on other countries when it comes time to buy just about anything.  As I write this I’m in a hotel in Chicago, attending a Coast Guard Auxiliary conference and word processing on my Japanese computer when I’m not talking with the little woman on my Korean cell phone or reading my Kindle that was assembled in China.  This afternoon I decided that I wanted one of those snazzy zip-up folders that everyone seems so fond of and I went to the Auxiliary Store that had been set up in one of the conference rooms.  I bought my folder , and while I was browsing around I decided I’d also buy one of the windbreakers they had for sale.

So there I am in America’s heartland at a conference of patriotic souls—after all, we’re a branch of the Department of Homeland Security—doing what red-blooded Americans do best:  shopping.  I made my purchases and headed back to my room.  When I got here and opened up my goodies, guess what:  the folder with the nicely embroidered Auxiliary logo had a tag inside.  It read, “Made in China.”  I gritted my teeth and muttered, “Can’t we make anything in this country anymore?”  I then opened my jacket; smarting from the tag in the folder, I checked out the tag in the jacket.  “Made in Vietnam,” it declared.  Made in Vietnam!!!  Isn’t that the place I spent 18 months of my young manhood ducking rockets and slapping mosquitoes while my friends—I was a civilian there as a tech rep—were flying about, flying close air support for our troops?  You bet your bippy it’s the same place.

But you see, that’s the really odd twist to this little rant.  When Maxum disappears and those boats quit being manufactured, lots and lots of components that are being made elsewhere will not be needed.  Some day next week or next month, some guy who has never spoken an English sentence or who wouldn’t  know the Chesapeake if you put him in a crab trap is going to be out of a job.  And some woman who has been wiring Raymarine radar units in order to put food on her table, food that doesn’t include crabcakes or fish and chips, will have to find another way to make her living.

This economic downturn is still going on.  The politicians have done their best to divert us from that simple fact, but we’re not buying Maxums or Raymarine units, and everyone is feeling the sting.  I don’t have any answers.  Hell’s bells, I’m still working on the questions.

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