If you’re like me, you get lots of stories, jokes, anecdotes, offbeat videos and the like in your email inbox.

The other day, a genial acquaintance sent me a tale that, others tell me, has made the Internet rounds for years.  But it was the first I’d seen it.

I’ve fluffed it up a little, but it goes something like this:

A woman of some age is placing items on the check-out counter at a grocery store when the young cashier delivers an admonishment:

“You should bring your own cloth bags,” he intones, righteously.  “Plastic bags aren’t good for the environment.  It’s the ‘the green thing.’  Eco, ya know?”

The woman apologizes for her thoughtlessness, explaining that “we didn’t have this ‘green thing’ back when I was your age.”

That should have been the end of it, but the young enviro-snob continues his scold.  “That’s the problem today,” he says.  “Your generation didn’t care enough to save our environment for future generations!”

This gets the old lady’s back up.  “No,” she tells the supercilious clerk. “Our generation didn’t have the ‘the green thing.’”

A returnable milk bottle, circa 1920, with a stack of day-of-the-week bands to identify the vintage of its contents. (Library of Congress)

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.  I think you call it “recycling.”

She was just warming up.

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.

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.  Wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in the “olden” days.

Back then, kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

We had one radio in the house, and later one TV ­— not a TV the size of Montana in every room.

A very ordinary, and typical, American kitchen in 1939. No mixers or microwave ovens or blenders here. (Library of Congress)

In the kitchen, we blended and stirred and sifted 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 peanuts 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.  And we got up 15 times an evening to change the TV channel, rather than click a couple of buttons on a remote.  So we didn’t need any health clubs or treadmills that suck on electricity.

We wore cotton and wool clothing, not chemically “stretched” slacks and thermo-gear.

We drank from the tap or a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a plastic bottle or a big, rented jug of designer water.

We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying new pens, 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.”

Even getting ON this New York City streetcar in 1913 was good exercise. (Library of Congress)

Back then, people took the bus or streetcar, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service.  And we played, and played, and played — outside, from morning to night.  The only time we sat or stood around playing video games was at the fair or on short vacations at the beach.

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 in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

We didn’t need to pay extra for “organic” food because we didn’t feed our chickens and cows hormones or inject pesticides into our apples, eventually polluting the ground and water system.

The old lady concludes, “So you might think a minute before calling us old folks wasteful because we didn’t have ‘the green thing’ back then?”

Unfortunately the version of the story that I read says nothing about the clerk’s reaction — or that of the customers waiting in line behind the old woman. Read the rest of this entry »