In the queue at the store, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.
The woman apologized to him and explained, "We didn't have the green thing back in my day."
The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment."
He was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.
Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.
We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.
Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that old lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.
Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.
We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then.
Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.
But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?
Remember: Don't make old People mad.
We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to tick us off.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
We didn't have "the green thing".....
Darlene sent this! Lovely!
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This is fantastic. I'm so glad you posted it. Pls put it on FB, so I can share. I can't get on Darlene's blog and I miss it so.
ReplyDeleteHey. I can get on now. Go figure.
ReplyDeletei just posted it on FB, so now you have a choice!
ReplyDeleteXE--Devil's advocate here. We didn't drink from water fountains, we drank from a hand-cranked pump on a well using a community cup that hung on it...and watched as some others of us died from catching community diseases. We burned our paper trash and threw old, unusable wash tubs, tires, and such in a gully. We burned wood and coal producing unfiltered particulates, and locomotives ran on coal that produced so much soot that our white-painted houses had to be scrubbed every few months. We kids played with mercury and didn't worry if blobs of it got away from us (who knows where it ended up?)
ReplyDeleteYes, out of necessity, we re-used (oh, how I hated wearing my elder brother's overalls!) and "made do"; but, we gave never a thought to the legacy that would accrue to ourselves as adults or to our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren.
We weren't willfully bad, just ignorant. Our elders struggled just to keep their next generation alive and mourned at their failures. Each generation does the best it can with the knowledge and resources it has - I think!
Cop Car
Cop Car: Oh, how I remember all of THAT, too. We used our paper trash (not much of that) to start a fire in the fireplace. All the other "garbage" went to the town dump. Our farmer friends in Iowa tossed their unburnable trash into a gully far away from the house--and that's where my beloved "portable" typewriter wound up. (They were called "portable" if you could lift them off the desk.) And I remember very fondly as a young adult in northern Wisconsin driving out to the gut dump at the lake after dark, parking a ways off, and turning on the headlights so we could throw rocks at the bears! (A lot of growing up was then and is now pure luck.)
ReplyDeleteMy mother died of stomach cancer, but it was probably mesothelioma, since it was outside of her stomach--on the lining of her chest and abdominal cavities. That can come from second-hand smoke (my dad's Pall Malls) or helicobacter (often found in rural water supplies--our pump at the lake) or asbestos (mined in northeastern MN).
You're right about the ignorance. But I think we're ignoring what we've learned.
XE--Nice of Hattie to give you a direct link! While writing my previous comment, I failed to point out a couple of green things that we did - again, from necessity. Farm animals were watered by wind-powered pumps and our lone radio was powered by a tiny wind generator on the roof of an out building (not to be confused with the outhouse which was farther from the house!) Oh! And our milk came in a pail - carried down the lane from Grandmother's house.
ReplyDeleteOnce we moved to the city, we kids walked most places; but, we had buses, streetcars, and trollies for mass transit. After marriage, I paid $2/week to ride to/from work with a co-worker, who had two other riders.
Cop Car
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ReplyDeletestephen6780: i deleted your comment. this is not a bulletin board service for advertisements.
ReplyDeleteI hate to be such a stickler, but technically, what you do/did with returnable bottles is reuse rather than recycle them, and it is even higher up the chain of green than recycling. Buying a "green", biodegradable shopping bag to put your groceries in is one thing, but using the same canvas bag for twenty years like my mother did, is actually green. love this post. I've made a copy of it to read to my son when he's old enough to get it.
ReplyDeleteJonny: I'm honored indeed that you read this. Just this morning I checked into WANF for inspiration (guest coming this weekend). Can't wait to make the meatballs from sausage. (I've done that before but didn't know it had a fancy Italian name....)
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid, we made all of our spending money at the lake scouring the ditches for returnable pop and beer bottles. So happy to learn that was even greener than the recycling we do now.