We did not have the Green thing back then
From a FaceBook message
Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the much older lady that she should bring her own grocery bags, because plastic bags are not good for the environment.
The woman apologized to the young girl 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."
The older lady said that she was right -- our generation didn't have the "green thing" in its day. The older lady went on to explain:
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 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 school books. 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 throw away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220volts. 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 "greenthing" 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 blade in arazor 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 in the family's $45,000 SUV or van, which cost what a whole house did before the"green thing." 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?
Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart ass young person.
We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to really piss us off... especially from a tattooed, multiple pierced smart-ass who can't make change without the cash register telling them how much.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Every morning, Mon-Sat, I got in a milk truck at 5 AM and ran wire carriers of milk bottles up to people's doors and carried their empty bottles back to the truck before being dropped off at my high school at 8 AM. On Saturdays, after the milk deliveries, I worked until 2 PM running the big bottle washing machine at the dairy, washing and sterilizing bottles for the next week's deliveries.
We didn't do the "Green Thing" then, either. Before I had that job, because I was too young, I collected pop bottles and took them back to the store to get the 3 cent deposit on them. A kid needed a buck or two, even back in those olden times. 
The good ol' days
I saw a news segment not long ago on how some women are having to leave their babies in dirty (disposable) diapers longer because they can't afford to keep buying new ones.
Um, hello? Nobody ever heard of cloth diapers? yeah, the initial expenditure can be a bit more, but in the end you save money.
Oh, whine whine whine...we don't have washers and dryers and the laundromat doesn't allow dirty diapers to be washed in their machines, boo hoo, whine whine whine.
Um, hello again!!!
I asked my mom how she dealt with my diapers nearly 62 years ago.
She said she washed them BY HAND, in the bathtub. I didn't ask if she used rubber gloves, but she may have. She dried them wherever she could in the crappy little three room apartment she and my dad lived in.
and there were times in my life when I was too poor to have a washing machine, and no car to bring me to a laundromat.
I did the family wash in the bathtub as well, although in some cases I was lucky enough to have a clothes line on a porch to dry them on.
You do what you gotta do, and that's that.
Oh, and the hand-me-downs...
being the oldest of three girls didn't always guarantee new clothes.
We had three (girl) cousins who were a bit older. Every so often we'd go visit them and come back home with treasure.
Comic books and hand-me-down clothes.
We were in Heaven
it must be true... 
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http://www.democraticunderground.com/1018440432
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http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002749075
I could post more but my ctrl-V finger is tired
