True story. 1950's-2000's

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AlexD

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I don't usually read these type of things but this one caught my eye. Figured I'd share... Makes you notice the differences[8|]
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Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.
The woman apologized 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."
She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.
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 truely 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 schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was 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 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 throwaway 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 the 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 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?
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Old-Lady-not-Shopping-Green.jpg


Who else agrees?[;)] 1900's all the way[sm=thumbup1.gif]

(Love the part about the bottles[sm=lol.gif])
 

epackage

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True Story....mayyyyyyyyyyyyyybe, good story with a lesson to be learned..... definetly[;)]
 

CWBookAuthor

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That is so TRUE! I remember our first TV and it was so tiny! As for the grocery stores, I was a clerk at a store in Arlington, Va., and we only had paper bags. Plastic bags? What in the world were they for? It's nice to remember the "past."

Mike
 

AlexD

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I hate how things today are supposed to be "green" and Eco-friendly, when in reality they do more bad than good. Glass bottles are wonderful, they can easily be make into new ones (or a million other things) or if you want to keep them there's even more uses for them! Today's plastic bottles are easy for us because we can just throw them away, but when they go to what to do with them that's no easy job. I like how Coca-Cola a few years ago started somewhat pushing the glass bottles into stores. They're becoming more and more popular! They taste 90x better too[:D] Another thing is the cars and other metal things. They were hand-made in a factory. Sure, it's a lot more work, but then they'd have to make less because they'd actually last! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-FbVF1x1_U . In some ways it's be better if things just went to how they were 50-100 years ago
[&:][:mad:]
 

andy volkerts

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Yeah some of the good old days are okay, but I dont think that I would want to go back to the 1850s or so, unless it was to teleportate some of them great old bottles unto now!![:)][:)]
 

cyberdigger

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Every generation commits its environmental atrocities, and we come up with new problems faster than we can fix old ones.. don't kid yourself, humans always find a way to screw it up no matter what it is.. [:D]
 

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