It seems that since government's Cash for Clunkers program for automobiles was so successful, it is now turning its attention to our home appliances. That's right - Uncle Sam will give you $200 for your old, outdated appliances towards the purchase of a shiny new, more energy-efficient one.

These include:

• Refrigerators
• Washers
• Dryers
• Dishwashers

The idea is to help stimulate the sales of more energy-efficient appliances, and is part of the President's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Each person who purchases a new appliance with the Energy Star seal on it will recieve $200 per appliance, until all $300,000,000 of the money set aside for this program is gone.

Wow. That sounds pretty interesting.

I am trying to understand the logistics of this though.

Will the government send someone to your house to remove your old appliance, or will the store where you purchase your new appliance be responsible for hauling it away? Or will you be allowed to keep it, or required to surrender it? What if you don't have a truck or other vehicle to haul it away - Will the government reimburse you for the expense of paying someone from Joe's Movers to move it for you?

I hope they don't dismantle and destroy all of the old appliances - especially washers and dryers.

First of all, they have perfectly good parts that can be refurbished and sold to dealers who in turn sell them to people who hold on to their old appliances and need the parts, since they just don't make them anymore. Unless they don't want to salvage them in order to eventually force people to buy the newer, more energy-efficient models anyway.

"Clunker" vs. "Vintage"

The washing machine as clunker is portrayed in a humorous way in the popular sitcom I Love Lucy, in which Lucy eagerly unloads onto Ethel her old clunker of a washing machine, since she had found out Ricky was getting her a new one. As soon as Ethel took possession of the machine, it started malfunctioning, so Ethel tried to give it back to Lucy, who wasn't having it. At this point, they got wind of a collector of sorts who was willing to pay the owner of the machine much more than it was worth, so the women started fighting over the clunker in a vigorous tug-of-war, which catapulted the machine over the guardrail of the porch upstairs, sending it plummeting to the ground where it was smashed to smithereens.

I could be wrong, but I think there's a lesson of sorts in there somewhere...

I can't help but feel that doing away with all of these machines and cars and whatnot also does away with one more relic from the past - part of our history.

Granted, there is a lot of junk out there, but there's also things that are symbols of a whole other era...things that were considered modern conveniences once upon a time that we now scoff at. It's a shame to see our past erased bit by bit.