In the 1970's my mom - according to my dad - lost her mind and shelled out a hundred and fifty bucks for a blender.
Of course it wasn't "just" a blender. It was a solid kryptonite VitaMix Super-3600 Reversing Blade Hadron Large Collider prototype. The thing weighed half as much as a Volkswagon Beetle, and was 9 times as fast.
It was one of the few things I've ever seen that lived up to its hype. And it hyped a lot. The steel canister had a sticker on it that says (verbatim, in full Ingrish glory):
SUPER 3600
"The Bread Maker"
Cooks
Juices
Freezes
SIMPLE AS 1, 2, 3
1. In the wide top
2. Flip head on impact lever
3. Serve from spigot with pressure continuous action.
UNLIMITED CAPACITY
All Grain Grinder and Bread Maker,
Salad, Ice, Meat Chopper (with or without liquid)
Bland Foods, Ice Cream
TOTAL JUICER With Nothing Thrown Away
SELF CLEANING
800 RECIPE BOOK
5-YEAR GUARANTEE
All that on the front sticker in blazing red, white and black. I'm not sure why anyone would want "Bland Foods", by the way, but they were proclaiming it nonetheless.
I remember distinctly in the owner's manual it saying "...and if the garbage men in your neighborhood ever go on strike, just put your garbage into the VitaMix canister and liquefy it. Pour your garbage down the kitchen sink!"
We never got to test that particular claim, but we did just about everything else. My mom bought it when she was fully immersed in her "Health Food" mania - the sort of health food mania particular to the mid-1970's, with it's vague "fuck the Man" neo-hippie overtones served alongside dish after dish that had the texture and flavor of burlap. The VitaMix fit the image perfectly. It was loud, it was hairy, and it chewed spelt and took jobs away from evil Establishment pandering municipal garbage haulers.
So she ground wheat berries and made bread that nobody but her ate (or could chew), made wheat grass shakes that nobody but her drank, stuffed a whole chicken - bones and all - into the hopper along with some water and wild ramp from our yard, turned it on and 15 minutes later had boiling soup (later when she went off the deep end and became a vegetarian she substituted tofu and wheat gluten or something). She made ice cream out of anything that fit into the canister along with an ice cube: celery, miso, crayons for all I know.
It was all awful, awful food.
But...the VitaMix worked perfectly. You'd flip it on and the thing practically leaped into the air, screaming like mad and threatening to attack anything that came near. Within seconds it had whatever was placed in the long metal holder pulverized. If it was a particularly tough ingredient - say, a Schwinn 10-speed - you used the "reverse" toggle a few times. It was dust before you knew it.
I'm sad to say that my mom's dedication to healthy living came to naught. She died in 1995, at age 54, of a rare cancer. But I'm glad to say I got the VitaMix.
And I don't use it to make burlap.
That massive, angry, squat steel machine has stood on my counter since I got home from her funeral, and I don't think a week has gone by since that I haven't used it for something. Even if it's just to hammer in nails.
Well, two months ago, it finally joined my mom. The drive mechanism that connects the bottom of the canister to the base motor snapped.
With most blenders this would be a two week setback at most, as you waited for a new one to arrive from some authorized dealer. But this is not "most blenders". VitaMix (according to their forum community) recently decided to stop providing replacement parts for older machines...starting with the drive mechanism that connects the bottom of the canister to the base motor.
Nooooo!!!
Dammit.
So I did what any modern consumer does: eBay.
(continued in Pt.2)
