Are you green?

[ChrisK]

Have you historians seen this one yet?

Checking out at the supermarket recently, the young cashier suggested I should bring my own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment. I apologised and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days." The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

She was right about one thing: our generation didn't have the green thing in “Our” day. So what did we have back then? After some reflection and soul-searching on "Our" day here's what I remembered we did have....

Back then, we returned milk bottles, pop bottles and beer bottles to the shop. The shop sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilised and refilled, so it could use the same bottles repeatedly. 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 shop 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 nappies because we didn't have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 240 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, 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 Britain. 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 old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn petrol 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 bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their mothers 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 computerised 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?

[margarita]

I hadn't come across that before. Thank you - it just made my day.

Maggie

[glynisaddy]

so true

[stepives]

And drawing water from the well, and collecting rainwater in water barrells. No taps to leave running.

We never had it so good, all those years ago.

Thanks for the thread.


Steve.

[Ladkyis]

But we did have our own bags to take shopping with us - we called them shopping bags. We didn't bother to call them bags for life because we expected then to last that long anyway.
Here in Wales everyone now has to pay for plastic carrier bags so most people have "bags for life" instead, just like the good old days. When no one had central heating, when children slept under overcoats and six to a bed. When unmarried pregnant girls were made to feel guilty for giving in to the pressure from their boyfriends and carried the full weight of the disapproval of society for something that they didn't do on their own.
When people who are homosexual could be locked up for years for their sexuality while paedophiles blamed the children for "leading them on"......
We may not have had the green thing back then - and I do realise that it was just a bit of fun and I am having a bit of a rant - but we did have make do and mend.
What came before is what has made the present day. Everyone wants more for their children than they had themselves and that is the real cause of the wastefulness of society today - we are getting better though

~climbs down off her soap box and wanders off, muttering~

[terrysfamily]

~climbs down off her soap box and wanders off, muttering~

Ladkyis, I like the way you rant

[judyg]

Ladkyis, I like the way you rant

I'll second that!!

Judyg

[Mutley]

And we only laid back in a bath once a week with water heated on the range and we washed our hair in the bath and we dried it....
How did we dry it? I think it 'swung free'
but we didn't do the green thing then.

We must have been dirty bunch of lay about swingers

[Ladkyis]

Yay Mutley! My twin tells it like it is!

[JohnN]

Around London (perhaps other places too) the postmen carried their bundles of mail tied up with bits of string which were thrown on the pavement as the bundle was opened. The string was collected by keen youngsters and recycled.
The milkman's horse would leave gifts on the road, avidly sought after by amateur rose-growers - no artificial fertilisers then.
Christmas presents were unwrapped carefully so that the paper could be put aside and used again the following year.
Oranges came wrapped in tissue paper which was kept to be used as toilet paper.
Brown wrapping paper was re-used, over and over again, until it disintegrated.
Envelopes were re-used by pasting a label over the address part.
Once a month, Grandad would empty the 'thunder box', burying the contents in his bean trench. He grew the best beans in Hampshire! He had no need for chemical fertilisers either.

Those were the days...