Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the much older lady that she should bring her own grocery bags, because plastic bags are not good for the environment.
The woman apologized to the young girl and explained, “We didn’t have this ‘green thing’ back in my earlier days.”
The young clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”
The older lady said that she was right — our generation didn’t have the “green thing” in its day. The older lady went on to explain:
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 carried our lunches, left overs, and if we were lucky a piece of fruit, or home made cookie in lunch tin lunch pails/boxes until we went to High School. We didn’t get in a gas guzzling car and drive to a fast food joint for a burger or a taco.
Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags that we reused for numerous things. Most memorable besides household garbage bags was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our school books. This was to ensure that public property (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribbles. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. But, too bad we didn’t do the “green thing” back then.
We walked up stairs because we didn’t have an escalator in every store elevators in 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 that took 500 years to decompose in the landfill. Over 300 pounds of wood, 50 pounds of petroleum feed stocks and 20 pounds of chlorine used to produce disposable diapers for one baby EACH YEAR. We air dried diapers and clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts. Wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, and if you were the oldest they came from your cousins, not always brand-new clothing every week. After 3 children when the cloth diapers wore out, they became dust rags, rags to wipe greasy hands, wash/wax our 1 car, spit shine shoes, wipe up spills, we didn’t have those fancy costly to produce paper towels until you see, when they finally wore out a couple of years later, they decomposed rapidly in the landfill. In the summer we wore $2 flip flops, and got new shoes come school time.
We hand washed our dishes, hand dried them, before we put them away, we didn’t have a dishwasher that used several gallons of water and two hours of electricity.
We didn’t have a special spray for mirrors, floors, toilets, whose chemicals are not environmentally friendly or the smell causes a sinus headache and stuffy nose, if we didn’t have indoor plumbing, we went out in all types of weather to use an outhouse, where a Sears and Roebuck catalog was our toilet paper. In the summer we took baths in #10 wash tubs.
Have you ever washed diapers, clothes, fatigues in the bathtub, because there was no money for one of those electricity guzzling laundromat, the only thing that went to the Dry cleaners was dad’s or husband’s Sunday suit he’d worn several times or a Military Dress Uniform. Rest was washed by the women not a service for a hefty fee to pay for that electricity, soap and water.
We put all plant matter in a compost heap to put on our gardens. We caught rain water in a cistern, or had a well.
We didn’t send out for pizza if we didn’t feel like cooking, we made a meal from our garden or whatever we canned, or whatever meat, rabbit, squirrel, deer, moose or bear our dad’s or brothers shot or trapped. Or killed off a hen that had quite laying, oh, did I tell you we weeded the garden, canned the crop, rung the chicken’s neck and plucked the feather?
And if we needed a new cover you call it a electric blanket, or cranked up the heat using even more electricity, we made a quilt out of old clothes, flour sacks, even our bloomers were made from those flour sacks, as we’re dresses, our brothers shirts too.
But young lady you are right; we didn’t have the “green thing” back in our day. IF you want to go back to WW2 food was rationed, all metal, leather went to the Military first, if your falling apart shoes got a hole in the sole you put a piece of cardboard, or linoleum in it. As our fighting men got first dibs on all those things. We didn’t have $30K weddings, we were lucky to have a Sunday dress, stockings with no runs, and he had his Dress Uniform. Now you buy a $3K dress for yourself and your 12 bridesmaids, and tuxes are rented for groom and his 12 groomsmen and jet off to Aruba. We spent the night at a local motel and called it a honeymoon. All that cost money, we didn’t have. But you go into debt for and moan about it for years.
If we didn’t have money for college we didn’t go. No one gave us a grant we wasted or dropped out of because the going got to hard. We got a job, and went to college at the same time.
Back then we had one tube TV, or radio we all gathered around, in the house — not a TV or radio in every room. And the TV was a small 3 channels, which you changed yourself, screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them? you now use throw away facial tissue that cost a lot of energy to make.), 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 wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap another enviro hazard that takes hundreds of years to decompose in the landfill. 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 plowed a field with a mule or a horse which we had to feed, water and take care of. Then plant the seed by hand. We exercised by working so we didn’t needed to drive in a gas guzzling car to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. IF we were lucky to own a phone (land line to you deary) you walked to the kitchen to answer it, and it might have been a party line so you had to listen to the number of rings, and you never knew who was listening in on your call, now you have a smart phone you use electricity to charge several times a day.
But she’s right; we didn’t have the “green thing” back then.
We drank water from a fountain when out, or a dipper in a bucket 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 plastic pen and throwing the old one which takes a very long time to decompose in the landfill, and we stropped a razor at first to sharpen it until some one invented the razor blade, then we replaced the razor blade in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. We ladies wore stockings with garter belts which we stopped the runs with clear nail polish, until they got past our skirts, then hubby got them to spit shine his dress shoes for Sunday or a Funeral or for his Dress Uniform.
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 in the family’s $45,000 SUV or van, which cost what a whole house did before the “green thing.” 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 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger 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?
And we went to bed when it got dark and got up at day light to start the day over 7 days a week.
Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart ass young person who can’t even operate a cash register right.
We don’t like being old in the first place, so it doesn’t take much to piss us off... Especially from a tattooed, green haired, multiple pierced smart ass who can’t make change without the cash register telling them how much to give back to us, while snapping their gum while talking, which is impolite I was taught.
Bfl