“Checking out at the store, the young clerk suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own shopping bags as Plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.

The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have the ‘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 our day. Back then we returned milk bottles, beer bottles, and soda bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed, sterilized, and refilled, so they could use the same bottles over and over. They were truly recycled. We didn’t have the green thing in our day. Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags that we used for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags for book covers. This was to ensure that public property (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribbling. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. Too bad we didn’t have the green thing back then.

We walked up stairs because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and other buildings. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300 horsepower machine to go two blocks.

Back then we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on the line, not in an energy-grabbing machine burning up 220 watts. Wind and solar power dried our clothes in those early days. Kids got hand-me-downs from brothers and sisters, not always brand new clothing. We had one TV or radio in the household, not in every room. The TV screen was the size of a small handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen back then we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric appliances to do everything for us. When we packaged an item to send in the mail we used wadded up old newspapers, not styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

This article was sent to me by a friend over the internet. Some of it is a little far-fetched but most of it is bordering on the truth. I know, because I lived back in those days and I get “hot under the collar”’ when I hear people say today that we weren’t thinking of the future generation. What will generations fifty years from now say about them? Think about it.

I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious. Albert Einstein

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