Sad but true !

Sassycakes

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Location
Pennsylvania
In line, the cashier says to an elderly woman:
- Madam, you have to carry your own shopping bags because these plastic bags are not eco-friendly!
The old lady apologized and responded:
- In my time there was no such "green wave".
- This is our problem today, madam. Your generation didn't care enough about the environment.
- You're right - the lady replied. Our generation didn't care enough for the environment.
Glass bottles of milk, soda, and beer used to return to the store. The shop would return
them back to the factory, where they were washed and sterilized before using them again
and again. We really didn't care about the environment back in the day. We even washed the
baby diapers because there were no disposable ones. We dried them ourselves, not in electric
dryers. Those diapers were really drying from the wind and sun.
We really didn't care about the state of the environment back in our day. Back in our day we
only had one TV and one radio in the house, not one TV per room. And the TV had a 14 inch screen,
not the size of a stadium, which when it broke, would be thrown out of nowhere. In the kitchen,
we had to do everything by hand because there were no electrical appliances to do everything for us.
When we mailed something fragile to pack, we used old newspapers, not nylon bubbles and styrofoam balls
that take 500 years to decompose.
Back in the day we didn’t use petrol lawn mowers to mow the lawn, they were mechanical and we used our arms
to move them. The workouts were amazing and we didn’t have to go to the gym to get fit.
You're right, we didn't worry about the environment in our days. We used to drink water straight from the tap,
not from the plastic bottles and cups that now fill the oceans.
There wasn't really a "green wave" in our days - back then we all got on the tram or bus, boys used bikes or walked
to school instead of using their parents as a 24-hour taxi service.
So isn't it amazing that the current generation talks so much about the "environment", but is unwilling to give anything
up and think of living with little like I did back in my day!
Now that you've read this rant, send it to your friends who are over 50, and to young people who have it all in their
hands and only know how to criticize the elderly!!!


· ·
 

I'm 66 and I don't remember milk deliveries or milk being in glass bottles (but I do remember pop being in glass bottles that could be returned and get a small amount of money). All I can remember from my youth in suburban midwest USA are the paper cartons where you have to get the side of the top unfolded to make it a spout.
 

I'm 66 and I don't remember milk deliveries or milk being in glass bottles (but I do remember pop being in glass bottles that could be returned and get a small amount of money). All I can remember from my youth in suburban midwest USA are the paper cartons where you have to get the side of the top unfolded to make it a spout.
I'm 74 and remember not only the milk, but bread was delivered too.
 
I'm 66 and I don't remember milk deliveries or milk being in glass bottles (but I do remember pop being in glass bottles that could be returned and get a small amount of money). All I can remember from my youth in suburban midwest USA are the paper cartons where you have to get the side of the top unfolded to make it a spout.
Turning 76 soon. We frequently returned soda bottles i'd ride my bike store with them in my basket. In 1956 when parents divorced and Mom took me to NJ both paternal grandma and favorite paternal aunt living n Belleville, a suburb of Newark, got milk delivered in bottles. They had thin cardboard lids similar to the lids on single serving ice cream cups back then. (Anyone else remember when one brand had pictures of movie stars on underside of those lids?) For some reason i was fascinated by how the cream would rise with enough force to push the lid of the milk bottle up, tho now it occurs to me the cold on the porches may have been a factor.
 
I'm 66 and I don't remember milk deliveries or milk being in glass bottles (but I do remember pop being in glass bottles that could be returned and get a small amount of money). All I can remember from my youth in suburban midwest USA are the paper cartons where you have to get the side of the top unfolded to make it a spout.
I remember when the milk cart was drawn by a horse and people put a billy can on the front door step to be filled with a pint of milk. Later it was delivered in returnable glass bottles sealed with a light aluminium cap. We saved the caps to make into Christmas garlands. Certain birds learned to pierce the caps with their beaks to partake of the cream at the top of the milk.
 
i find it ironic that some think reverting back to glass bottles is a new idea ...... many items started in glass and moved to plastic or from paper cartons to plastic....... what is old is NEW now
look at old westerns as ladies brought in wicker type baskets or boxes for the general store to put things in ..... the original bring your own bag.....
 
We had both the dairy truck and the bakery truck coming to the house until Mom finally got a drivers license, perhaps 1953 or 54. But milk still came in glass bottles from the market for a while.

I'm guessing that this long "rant" is fictitious, not a real incident, but it points toward the historical ignorance of many younger people. They seem to have no idea what challenges their ancestors faced, and don't seem to know much of anything else either.

Here are some "man on the street" interviews




These college students do a little better
 
In line, the cashier says to an elderly woman:
- Madam, you have to carry your own shopping bags because these plastic bags are not eco-friendly!
The old lady apologized and responded:
- In my time there was no such "green wave".
- This is our problem today, madam. Your generation didn't care enough about the environment.
- You're right - the lady replied. Our generation didn't care enough for the environment.
Glass bottles of milk, soda, and beer used to return to the store. The shop would return
them back to the factory, where they were washed and sterilized before using them again
and again. We really didn't care about the environment back in the day. We even washed the
baby diapers because there were no disposable ones. We dried them ourselves, not in electric
dryers. Those diapers were really drying from the wind and sun.
We really didn't care about the state of the environment back in our day. Back in our day we
only had one TV and one radio in the house, not one TV per room. And the TV had a 14 inch screen,
not the size of a stadium, which when it broke, would be thrown out of nowhere. In the kitchen,
we had to do everything by hand because there were no electrical appliances to do everything for us.
When we mailed something fragile to pack, we used old newspapers, not nylon bubbles and styrofoam balls
that take 500 years to decompose.
Back in the day we didn’t use petrol lawn mowers to mow the lawn, they were mechanical and we used our arms
to move them. The workouts were amazing and we didn’t have to go to the gym to get fit.
You're right, we didn't worry about the environment in our days. We used to drink water straight from the tap,
not from the plastic bottles and cups that now fill the oceans.
There wasn't really a "green wave" in our days - back then we all got on the tram or bus, boys used bikes or walked
to school instead of using their parents as a 24-hour taxi service.
So isn't it amazing that the current generation talks so much about the "environment", but is unwilling to give anything
up and think of living with little like I did back in my day!
Now that you've read this rant, send it to your friends who are over 50, and to young people who have it all in their
hands and only know how to criticize the elderly!!!


· ·
I have seen this several times and never get tired of reading it.
At my age I have experienced all of the above.
Thanks for posting.
 
The "good ol' days"...

In the Great Smog of 1952, pollutants from factories and home fireplaces mixed with air condensation killed at least 4,000 people in London over the course of several days. A few years earlier, in 1948, severe industrial air pollution created a deadly smog that asphyxiated 20 people in Donora, Pennsylvania, and made 7,000 more sick.
 
The "good ol' days"...

In the Great Smog of 1952, pollutants from factories and home fireplaces mixed with air condensation killed at least 4,000 people in London over the course of several days. A few years earlier, in 1948, severe industrial air pollution created a deadly smog that asphyxiated 20 people in Donora, Pennsylvania, and made 7,000 more sick.
Of course not everything was great, but we humans have a tendency to give temporary convenience, lower cost and other factors more weight than long term concerns like healthy environments.

i don't see this post as unbridled nostalgia for 'good old days' that weren't but rather as pointing out that our and previous generations did get some things right. Some of us pointed out the problems at the time when disposability started trending, and often got labeled as kooks, alarmists for it.

When plastic bags became the norm at stores, paper often not offered. (Paper much more recyclable) i bought cloth 'beach' bags and took them into stores. Decades ago now, and so uncommon at the time that i often had to let an employee examine that it was empty on way in and show my receipt on way out.
 
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I'm 66 and I don't remember milk deliveries or milk being in glass bottles (but I do remember pop being in glass bottles that could be returned and get a small amount of money). All I can remember from my youth in suburban midwest USA are the paper cartons where you have to get the side of the top unfolded to make it a spout.
wow... I;m the same age as you..and at age 12 to 14 I was a milk girl delivering glass bottles of milk to doorsteps in the early morning, and in the snow and dark mornings in winter as well .. We couldn't wear woollen gloves as the bottles would slip from our hands, so our bare hands used to stick to the bottles because of the cold in winter..
 
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Of course not everything was great, but we humans have a tendency to give temporary convenience, lower cost and other factors more weight than long term concerns like healthy environments.

i don't see this post as unbridled nostalgia for 'good old days' that weren't but rather as pointing out that our and previous generations did get some things right. Some of us pointed out the problems at the time when disposability started trending, and often got labeled as kooks, alarmists for it.

When plastic bags became the norm at stores, paper often not offered. (Paper much more recyclable) i bought cloth 'beach' bags and took them into stores. Decades ago now, and so uncommon at the time that i often had to let an employee examine hat it was empty on way in and show my receipt on way out.
I made tote bags out of my 50# feedsacks when they were empty, complete with wraparound handles. Still have several.
 
I'm guessing that this long "rant" is fictitious, not a real incident, but it points toward the historical ignorance of many younger people.
I love the rant, but I know it must be fictitious because no young person would ever let an older lady talk that long without interrupting. Ten seconds in it would be, "Yeah, okay boomer," and start talking to the bagger.
 
wow... I;m the same age as you..and at age 12 to 14 I was a milk girl delivering glass bottle of milk to doorsteps in the early morning, and in the snow and dark mornings in winter as well .. We couldn't wear woollen gloves as the bottles would slip from our hands, so our bare hands used to stick to the bottles because of the cold in winter..
A milkman came to our house every morning until the mid-1960s. By that time there were five children and three adults in the household. My mother discontinued the service since she was grocery shopping every few days anyway.
 
This story has been going around the internet for many years. A lot of people love looking at the past through rose colored glasses and at the present through garbage colored ones. I grew up in the 1950s. It wasn't all sunshine and lollipops from an environmental standpoint.

-Gas mileage for most automobiles was under 15 mpg.
-Corporations dumped tons of heavy metals, polluting chemicals, radioactive materials, etc., into waterways, oceans and landfills without a moment's consideration as to how that would work out years later. (The EPA wasn't even created until December 1970.)
-True, babies wore cloth diapers. Equally true, most homes with infants smelled distinctly of urine, and endless rounds of diaper rash were a given.
-During freezing cold days or rainstorms, people's laundry - including those fragrant diapers - were either strung throughout the house or left to mellow in their own stench until more favorable weather arrived.
-People had one TV because that's what they could afford. Yes, 14" screens. Let's also not forget how often someone had to stand next to the TV acting as a human antenna to tune in one of the 3 channels. And that's all there were: 3 channels in the greater NY area. Can't imagine what small towns received.
-Most families had one car, meaning the wife was stuck home all day. If a kid got sick or injured during the day and needed to be rushed to a doctor, the mom would call neighborhood friends who had a second car. (I know this because my mother had a license and a car and frequently shuttled moms and sick/injured family members to emergency doctor appointments.)
-Women worked from morning until night. Then they were encouraged by magazine and newspaper articles to have herself, the house, and the children all prettied up when her bread-winner husband arrived home. And because he was "working" all day, he was entitled to put his feet up from the moment he arrived home until he left for work the following morning. No housework or childcare responsibilities for the king of the castle.

That's how I remember the 1950s and 1960s.

By the way, the people in the elderly woman's generation eschewed the environmentally sound habits passed down to them by previous generations and created the highly disposable, heavily polluting era that we are handing over to the youth of the planet.

In my opinion, a youthful cashier would have been perfectly justified in her anger at Boomers (of which I'm one) for the mess we're leaving.
 
I'm 66 and I don't remember milk deliveries or milk being in glass bottles (but I do remember pop being in glass bottles that could be returned and get a small amount of money). All I can remember from my youth in suburban midwest USA are the paper cartons where you have to get the side of the top unfolded to make it a spout.
Pop? What's pop? In NJ, where I grew up, we called it by its correct name, "soda." 😆

Also, those chocolate sprinkles we loved on our ice cream cones were called "jimmies." I don't know why.
 
This story has been going around the internet for many years. A lot of people love looking at the past through rose colored glasses and at the present through garbage colored ones. I grew up in the 1950s. It wasn't all sunshine and lollipops from an environmental standpoint.
Good point, and our environmental problems began long ago, with the industrial revolution or earlier. As did the environmental movement. In the UK the first air pollution laws date back to the 1800s at about the same time John Muir was active in the US. Many credit Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring published in 1962 with beginning the modern environmental movement.

We did not use the returnable glass milk bottles because they were environmentally friendly, but because they were the cheapest and easiest thing. Plastic technology was yet to give us the modern milk jug...
Pop? What's pop? In NJ, where I grew up, we called it by its correct name, "soda."
In the Pacific NorthWET we called all fizzy drinks "soda pop"
In Texas we called everything coke
Always called them either coke, soft drinks, or cold drinks. Never soda or pop.
 


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