Hot Springs Rubber Bands

And what will a long lone dollar buy you in 2007 America? A pound of domestic rubber bands. I use rubber bands to tie up garbage bags, mostly, and for quite a while had a bag from an office supply store that lately ran out. All those rubber bands were alike in color and strength. Made in China I think. No surprise there.

Today I bought a bag of "assorted sizes," as it says on the bag, and assorted colors, as I can see: brown, while, blue and a lot of purple. Stretch one and it feels old, and cheap. Like it was made some years ago and is aging in the way rubber bands do, with decreasing elasticity and increasing fragility. But they only have to last long enough to be thrown away, so I don't feel too bad.

There on the back of the bag it says, "Made in Hot Springs, AR." Now that's a surprise. When visiting Hot Springs this year, if you'd asked me to guess about locally made products, rubber bands wouldn't have come to mind.