I still cook with family cast-iron skillets from the 1950s, plus some acquired from the Lodge family in South Pittsburgh, Tennessee, with whom I had a close friendship in the 1970s. Seasoned and cared for properly, they are nonstick and have superior heat retention. If I am cooking, you can bet it’s on cast iron.

Someone will probably be cooking in these same skillets and pots 200 years from now, if they are lucky.

A certain segment of the population is beginning to take note of cast iron for cooking. I am astonished at the prices Griswold cast-iron skillets command on auction sites these days. The company was founded in 1865 in Erie, Pennsylvania, and was noted for producing a lighter cast-iron skillet with a smoother finish. Someone will be cooking on those in another 200 years as well.

Landfills are filled with box-store nonstick skillets.

My father was in the “Buy Once, Cry Once” school of thought and never really believed that newer was necessarily better — just buy the best and most serviceable to begin with, use it, and maintain it. I still make coffee in the same stainless coffee pot that he did — you know, the stovetop (or campfire) kind with a basket for the coffee and glass percolator view on top. I’m not sure what it cost new, but it has been making good coffee for going on 60 years now. Plus, I just enjoy the process and the simplicity of it.

Both my cast-iron skillets and my coffee pot have served for the preparation of kitchen and back-country camp meals for decades. They are like old friends, well into their second generation of family service and ready for countless outdoor adventures to come.

Speaking of good merchandise to last, I have worn Lucchese Classic cowboy boots for 45 years. Made in San Antonio, Texas, the old-fashioned way with the soles attached with hand-driven lemonwood pegs, I still wear the first pair I bought. I have had them re-soled three times now, although when the fourth time comes around, I will probably have to send them to Texas or Oklahoma or maybe Montana. Those cobblers that do this right are hard to find anymore.

Against my inner voice I bought a pair of box-store cowboy boots to wear to work when I first moved to North Dakota. They made it a little over a year and now reside wherever worthless boots end up. I won’t do that again.

I still shave in the mornings with a Solingen, Germany, “DublDuck” straight razor that my grandfather shaved customers with in his barbershop 75 years ago. While certainly an acquired skill and not for everyone, I would never consider throwing it away either. The landfills are full of cheap plastic throwaway razors.

I enjoy handling the “soul and quality” of things I use frequently, and when I lay a high-grade, pre-World War II straight razor next to a plastic razor — well, you see my point.

I’m not criticizing anyone’s lifestyle here, just explaining my own. These are but examples of traditional — and what some would probably call “old-fashioned” — things that work for me. They are durable and give me a sense of connection to a time when people wasted nothing. Also, I have one foot solidly in two different centuries, so I am probably hanging on to things that make sense to me.

An old pig farmer once told me, “When we slaughter a pig, we use everything except the squeal.”

Our throwaway society is largely the result of the questionable genius of slick marketing and advertising campaigns, and while it’s certainly profitable, it’s also without question wasteful.

I have a friend deep in the mountains of Tellico Plains, Tennessee. Other than modern ammo for his hunting rifle and some current century overalls and hobnail boots, virtually everything he has and uses predates World War II.

He seems to be getting along just fine.