NITTY GRITTY
the
The Green Thing
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 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. 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) were not defaced by our scribblings. 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 and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower continued from page
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 energygobbling machine burning up 220 volts. Wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-medown clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.”
But that young 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 wadded up old newspapers 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..
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