GREEN

DOWN MEMORY LANE

GREEN

BY R. AUBREY LA FOY

       Green is the “hip” word today, meaning we should do all what we can to save the environment. I take offence to the implication that older generations contributed to the contamination of our world today. The suggestions, by some, are that we did little to help save the environment are far from the truth. While, in fact, we were not a wasteful generation but did many things that saved material, time and energy.

The other day an e-mail came through lamenting the use of “throw-away-plastic water bottles. It has always amazed me to see young people tilting a bottle of water when they are standing next to a water facet. Why in heavens name would you pay money to get water in a bottle from who knows where to drink? When I was a youth we got our milk, pop and beer in glass bottles that we returned to the store. Milk bottles were washed, sterilized and refilled at the creamery. I recall Mother doing the same with the glass milk bottles, giving me a dime and trotting over to the neighbor who kept his cow back of his house in a barn to pick up a quart of milk. Money was hard to come by in those days and many times we walked the road ditches and picked up discarded pop and beer bottles, taking them to the store and receiving a penny or so for each. When I was a kid an old fellow from Arnolds Park walked the road to Milford and back each day carrying a gunny sack to put discarded glass bottles. I asked my Dad about him and Dad told me that was about the only income the old fellow had. Good thing we lived in a tourist area

In 1940 several of us pooled our money a purchased a Model T Ford. We spent a great deal of time getting it to run and after several attempts made it go. Only one of us had a driver’s license so he was our driver. The Model T had a top and side curtains but most of the time we drove it with the top down. None of us had much money so one afternoon we all piled into the Model T and drove to Estherville. A real adventure as it is over 20 miles. We started in Milford, took Highway 71 to Spirit Lake and then Highway 9 to Estherville. Jim drove the car and the rest of us ran alongside and searched the ditches for pop and beer bottles. If we got tired, we rode a bit, rested and jumped out to look in the ditches. It was surprising how many bottles we found and upon reaching Estherville turned them in at a grocery store. Forget how much we got but know it was more than enough to resupply our car with gas. We even had enough after that to reward ourselves with a hamburger and malt. It was fun and the ride back was delightful just reclining and letting Jim do all the work. Today the kids can find pop cans the same way but the returns are not nearly as much. We recycled our bottles and we didn’t have the green thing in those days.

Several years ago our local YMCA in Spirit Lake built a wonderful facility. We built one here in Leisure World also for people to exercise and keep in shape. In my folk’s days they didn’t have an escalator in many stores and office building let alone an elevator. They walked to the meat market, school, bank, dry cleaners, and post office. During the Depression years our one car was jacked up on blocks during the winter in the garage and we walked to everything. School was five blocks away.  Downtown Milford was three blocks and church was four blocks from our house. We shoveled snow with our scoop shovels and mowed the lawn with a hand pushed mower and got all the exercise we needed.

We had one radio in our house and to really save one windup clock in the kitchen. The radio was a big Atwater-Kent that picked up about six radio stations not 150 like our TVs do today. About 4:00 p.m. my sister and my favorite programs started on the radio. We listened to Sky Harbor, Jack Armstrong, I Love a Mystery, Little Orphan Annie, Renfrew of the Mounties and a few others. In the evening we had all the great radio shows like Jack Benny, Gildersleeve, Fibber McGee and Molly, Amos and Andy and the Lux Theatre. We really saved on electricity and gas and for refreshments Dad would make a dishpan full of popcorn. When we wanted water it came out of the tap and put it in a glass not a plastic bottle like today. We were green in those days already.

Mother did have an electric clothes washer but put the damp clothes on a clothesline in the backyard. Diapers were washed, hung out to dry and not bought at the store and disposed of in the land fill. In those days we used solar power long before the new meaning came around that we use today. In those days most of the boys had only one or two pairs of pants-one for everyday and one for church and when if they tore or ripped Mother would put on a new patch. Today I cringe when I observe young people wearing jeans that are ripped and torn and pay through the nose to look scuffy. Think how much we saved in those days but the pants were always clean. Many nights after I had gone to bed Mother would wash my pants and hang them over the register to dry so I could wear them to school.

Several years ago I was cleaning out my parents home and opening a drawer found a Parker’s Lifetime fountain pen. In those days we refilled the pens and didn’t throw them away when they went dry, like today. It is almost impossible to find refills anymore for pens-want a waster. I recall that when I first started to teach in 1950 somebody had given me a fountain pen for graduation which I used at school. There was no law or rule that I know of but men teachers were supposed to wear white shirts, necktie and a suit. The fountain pens were not always perfect and many times they would leak and stain the white shirt. What a mess but we had our wives bleach the shirts and refilled the fountain pen. When I first started to teach I really saved on clothing as I had only two suits that I wore on alternate days. I’ll bet the kids got tired of those two suits but we had many neckties to seek some variation. When school was out practically all the students walked home, rode their bikes or rode a school bus and didn’t turn their moms into a 24-hour taxi service.

I recall getting invited to spend the weekend at a schoolmate’s home on a farm. We had electricity in our home in town but as I recall most rooms had one electric light bulb hanging from the ceiling and very few outlets like today with multiple outlets. We didn’t use or waste much electricity. My visit to my friend’s farm was a real awakening as they had no electricity. When it became dark out came the lanterns. We stumbled around in the dark to milk the cows, ate supper and even did some school work with only a feeble lantern for light. It wasn’t until REA came around in the 1940s that my farm friends had electricity but they sure didn’t use much energy as we do today in our homes and on the farms.

Unfortunately I have read many articles that lament how wasteful older generations were because we didn’t have the “green” things we have today. Horsefeathers! I think we had lots of savings and the present generations could learn from us old geezers. I do know that many of the unemployed today have had to cut back. Maybe they could or should read about us and how we lived in the 1930s.