By Joanne Byrne
Retired and Rejuvenated
Joanne Byrne.
Time for another trip down memory lane. This time it is to prove to our grandchildren and all members of the younger generation that we really were “tuned in” to environmental concerns way back when protecting the environment for future generations was not even a hot issue. We just did it because it was the right thing to do.
We may not have called it the “green thing” in our day, but we did return glass soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so the same bottles could be used over and over again. I remember having a milkman when I was young who delivered our milk every few days in glass bottles, and my mother leaving the empty bottles out for him to take back to the dairy to be cleaned, sterilized, and reused. These bottles really were recycled.
Remember how grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags that we used at home as garbage bags and as covers for our schoolbooks? This was to ensure that public property would not be defaced by our scribblings or spilled soup when we were studying at the kitchen table.
But we weren’t doing the green thing back then. We walked up stairs because we didn’t have escalators or elevators 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 a few blocks. Back then we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in energy-gobbling machines burning up 220 volts. Wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in the early days. But we didn’t call it being green.
Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand new clothing. We had one TV – or radio – in the house, not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen about the size of a handkerchief, not the size 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 newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.
Back then we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a plastic cup or bottle. We refilled writing pens from bottles of ink rather than buying new pens and we replaced a razor blade in a razor rather than throwing away the whole razor. But we didn’t have the green thing back then.
Back then we took a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their parents into a 24-hour taxi service. We didn’t have a computerized gadget to help us find the nearest burger place. We also had phone books and yellow pages.
But still we hear too often from the younger generation about how we “older folks” are wasteful just because we didn’t have the green thing back when we were young. I am not sure that I want to go back to these “old times,” but it’s still fun to think about how we really did take better care of our environment without calling it green. Let’s all continue to do what we can to protect our environment for future generations.
Joanne Byrne served as the senior services coordinator for the Town of Orange. She is now actively and happily retired. Email her at joannebyrne41@gmail.com to share your thoughts on retirement.