I know, I know; this lazy plagiarism has got to stop.
And it will, I promise.
It’s just that this email landed with a fortuitous thump in my inbox only a matter of days after I had been cussing fit to bust over the amount of plastic packaging surrounding one miserable curtain rail, and begged noisily to be shared…
…
“Checking out at the grocery store recently the young cashier suggested I should bring my own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.
I apologized 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, 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 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 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 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 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.
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 he 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?”
…
Now I’m “only” 34, so these memories are not entirely reminiscent of “My Day”. Although cloth nappies, fountain pens, one television in the house (and that only arrived when I was four or five) and endless hand-me-down clothes all formed a part of my childhood.
But life today moves at such a lickety-split pace, that sadly, and despite my relative youth ( 
), I can already put together a short “My Day” list of my very own.
- Pills that came in recyclable glass bottles as opposed to hundreds of aluminium strips.
- Milkmen who visited practically every home in the British Isles to take away used glass milk bottles – returning them clean and full the next day – as opposed to plastic bottles or practically un-recyclable cartons from supermarkets.
- Electric appliances that used to last 15 or 20 years, are now so cheaply made (in order to comply with unrealistic consumer expectations) that they have to be thrown away and replaced every couple of years.
- Drinking water in Mallorca provided in huge glass bottles, which could be returned and re-filled – I am not sure if that is still the case there, but certainly plastic throwaway containers rule supreme in most of the rest of Spain.
Added to all of the above is the simply absurd amount of packaging that seems to accompany almost everything one purchases nowadays: the use of a hacksaw would not go amiss in the releasing of some items from their prisons of layered plastic.
It certainly is enough to make one ponder where all this “progress” is heading, and what price will ultimately be paid for our blind insistence on “convenience” and our greedy and unsustainable demands of everything for, if not nothing, at least very little.
I am very much looking forward to hearing accounts of all “Your Days”, and hope that your memories stretch a little further back than mine – yesterday’s lunch is already lost in the mists of time…
07/01/2012 at 13:31 |
I just wonder whose convenience all this is for…after, as you say, almost having to use a hacksaw to access an international plug.
The suppliers’ convenience, to make packing and despatch less prone to breakages.
I call Costa Rica the land of the plastic bag…as everything comes in said…but on the other hand there is not the packaging i’m used to from Europe.
In Nicaragua you have great difficulty in buying a glass bottle of anything to drink unless you have an empty to return….for reuse.
Nothing green about it, just the way it used to be when I was a child.
Mark you, the first time I was presented with a fruit drink in a plastic bag with a straw stuck through the knot, that was a bit of a culture shock!
08/01/2012 at 20:38 |
The irony being that the things you eventually manage to tear from their plastic “protection” are usually so cheaply made that you will be repeating the process before your temper has cooled from the previous hacksawing…
07/01/2012 at 17:32 |
Apparently one of the unforseen side effects of putting individual pills in plastic strips is a reduction in the number of pill-related attempted suicides. It stops being an impulse thing when you have to pop out a hundred or so before you can do anything.
One thing that really strikes me these days is the level of the heating everywhere, when I was a child most houses didn’t have heating, even the ones that did kept it on very low because of the cost and when it got cold you were expected to put on another jumper. That rule still holds in this household. Staff in shops wore a jacket or twinset in the winter because customers wore coats..
08/01/2012 at 20:37 |
Oh goodness, yes. Overheated and over air-conditioned shops are a truly horrible thing: you really need to cart around a bikini in the winter months and a fur coat in the summer months just in order to have something comfortable to slip into whilst you are perusing their wares…!
07/01/2012 at 22:06 |
We made our own cakes, biscuits, jams, ginger beer (in fact I still do, but not the ginger beer as I didn’t like it anyway). I did the washing in the kitchen sink and dried it on a clothes drier if it was raining. (With old newspapers underneath to catch the drips!). We didn’t have washing up liquid – we used the same soap powder for washing up as for the washing. Biscuits were bought by the pound from the retailers big bin – broken ones were very cheap, needless to say. Butter and cheese were cut from big slabs. Our toilet was outside, and if you went at night, you had to take a candle with you to light the way.
Our toilet door fell off, and my Dad wouldn’t put it back on because “it was the ladlord’s responsibility”. Therefore we could wave to passing trains – we were next to a railway track – and watch the rats playing in the back garden – they were so sweet!!!
At this stage, my youngest daughter usually says “did you have shoes for school?”. Well of course I did, but I walked 2 miles there and back to save the busfare, so I could buy penny oxo cubes, which I loved.
We didn’t get pocket money then, but were allowed to keep the penny from returning pop bottles, which we collected from the “rich people” quite avidly.
I don’t know what the dog and cats ate – hope it was some kind of leftovers – as there wasn’t special canned food for them, or dry biscuits – if there was, we couldn’t have afforded it anyway.
We certainly never threw anything away – worn out, holey clothes were sold to the rag and bone man for a few pennies, and the manure from his horse was collected by us kids and sold to the same “rich people” for a penny a bucket.
I’m so glad the olden days are gone, but there are things I miss.
The community spirit was great – everyone knew everyone in the surrounding streets and help was always at hand
Of course, S.V., I am twice your age, and really appreciate the improvements in living standards, whilst still criticising the waste.
08/01/2012 at 20:40 |
I am sure there is a happy medium to be found – enjoying the comforts, without overly compromising our environment. Being aware of the problem is just the first step, as to what we do about it, that tends to be between the individual and their conscience!
08/01/2012 at 20:29 |
Perfectly said!
08/01/2012 at 20:41 |
I’m not sure who wrote the letter/account, but it struck a chord!
19/01/2012 at 12:08 |
I’m about the same vintage as Lesley Porter and also remember the past with a mixture of emotions. The lack of heat: such misery during cold weather, itchy, bleeding chilblains and ice on the inside of the windows and washing draped all over the kitchen in a vain attempt to get it dry. But also life was so much simpler – it was easier to sit down somewhere quiet and read and read because the laptop and mobile phone and tv weren’t around, demanding my attention. Life then was only better because I was young, healthy and had no responsibilities!
19/01/2012 at 13:19 |
Nostalgia is a wonderful thing! Still, it is also worth pondering from time to time on whether all this “progress” has improved every aspect of our lives, and perhaps considering cutting back on it if it hasn’t!