Sun dried clothes smell the best
I’m reaching retirement age. I’m also reaching the point of being tired of being told how green we are today and how ungreen we were in the past. Oh? When I was a kid:
One milk truck delivered to many
We didn’t all drive en mass to the store to buy milk. Milk was delivered, by one man in a milk truck. And milk came in reusable, recyclable bottles that you could also use for other things. Baked goods were delivered the same way. And vacuum cleaners! How ungreen of us.
Diapers had pins, not tabs
Our neighbor, who raised seven kids, washed cloth diapers because there weren’t disposables then. I wonder why no one champions recycling disposable diapers? We just toss them in land fills, vertical septic systems. And those cloth diapers were dried on a clothes line, an artifact found only in museums and my backyard. We did not use a 220 volt soon-to-wear out machine to dry clothes or start house fires. And kids got hand-me-down clothes, not the latest designed-for-them fashion seasonally. I got new clothes once a year, ordered out of a catalog for school. Rummage sales were community recycling. How ungreen of us.
Three channels in good weather
We didn’t get a TV until I was nine, a small black and white set we put on the window sill. It got three channels if the weather was good and you held the antenna just right. A PSB channel would not be added for a decade. Programming was wholesome and no censoring was needed for kids or grandma. We actually watched it as a family. One TV, not one in every room. It did not have a digital color screen twice the size of the window. How ungreen of us.
Food came from jars not cans
In the kitchen stuff was mixed, blended, chopped and beaten into submission by hand. No blenders, no food processors, no mixers. How many folks are willing to blend their environmentally healthy nutritious smoothies by hand? What’s the collective carbon footprint of all those blender macerating food from halfway around the world? We prepared our food by hand rather than buying it prepared. We never bought vegetables in a package, or hardly anything else. We put up food in reusable glass containers. It was called canning, a verb I don’t hear too often these days. And we packaged fragile items for mailing with old newspaper not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. We didn’t own plastic or paper cups or “sporks.” Anything beyond use that could burn was put in the kitchen stove, broken chairs to chicken bones. It cooked our food and warmed the house. How ungreen of us.
Nothing was thrown away
The only stuff we threw away was stuff that would grow fungus and smell. And before that happened it was put outside for the animals. Dead motors were kept for parts, old appliances were cannibalized for cords and wire. All manner of things were taken apart and the nuts and bolts saved. We actually took down a three-car garage and used the boards and timber to build our barn. We pulled nails out of boards, pounded them straight, and reused them at a time when nails were a couple of dollars for a 50 pound keg. My mother made rugs out of rags and had a huge button box filled with buttons off every piece of clothing destined to be a rug. How ungreen of us.
You kept a razor for decades
Pens and cigarette lighters were refilled. We put new blades in razors, put tape on the old blades and used them around the house. The whole razor was not thrown away just because the blade was too dull to shave with. I still own and use two straight razors. Typewriter ribbons were re-inked, and typewriter technology barely changed every half century rather than computer seasonally. How ungreen of us.
Push Lawn Mower
We walked up stairs because stores did not have elevators or escalators. We mowed the lawn by hand with a push mower. We bought local because it was what we had. Every home had a summer garden and us kids collected return bottles for pocket change. We rolled pennies by hand. Now a machine charges you 8% to do that. I walked or rode my bike several miles to school even the in winter, and shoveled the driveway by hand. We played board game with real humans during those long winters rather than buying a new game when we got bored. How ungreen of us.
Get lost, it makes life interesting
And we didn’t get a phone until I was 20 and in the Army. Overseas I got to call home once a year. Once. We wrote letters, now a dead art. Not every one had a cell phone or a personal computer in every pocket. How ungreen of us.
And we didn’t need two or more devices bouncing and triangulating signals over thousands of miles to find the nearest pizza place. We used our nose. How ungreen of us.
{ 29 comments… read them below or add one }
Judith Rice October 14, 2011 at 1:49 pm [edit]
While you and I might know of these things, along with a few others of “retirement” age, there are millions of kids out there that have nothing to compare their digitized and superficial word with and I fear we are a dying breed. Doing the things you grew up with left time for human beings to interact while foraging, growing, making and consuming. And in pulling nails from boards it gave time to stop and have a glass of cold homemade lemonade and small talk.
If it did all that, why did it change so fast? Was it the onset of that black box that has become a wall screen? Television came in, and was the first time ever that we know of where companies could sell to so many people watching the same thing at the same time. I tossed my television many years ago, but am considered the odd duck because I cannot carry on a conversation about some made up character in a made up show.
Thanks for your site.. it gives me hope that there are others out there who still have some real life in them! Lets hope that we can pass on some of our bits of knowledge about the real world instead of tweeting and texting information about what clothes some movie star wore last night!
Green Deane October 14, 2011 at 2:02 pm [edit]
Thanks… I stopped regular viewing of TV and movies in the 70s. When I was in the military there were no TVs on base and then I went to college and was busy passing. By the mid-70s there was little on TV that interested me, and I really didn’t like audience behavior at the movies so I basically stopped those two activities. I think I’ve been in a movie theater five times since the 70s, and the last TV I owned I won in 1983 at a Greek Festival in Melbourne Fl. Never used it. Eventually gave it away for parts. I’m not a Luddite, but sometimes I think the Amish have got it right.
Jason M October 14, 2011 at 2:01 pm [edit]
Love your website Dean. I have watched your YouTube videos for some time now. I will be using your website from now on. Great improvement over the old one BTW.
Green Deane October 14, 2011 at 2:03 pm [edit]
Thanks Jason… yeah, it was time to upgrade, and we have a lot of changes and additions planned as well as more plant articles so keep coming back.
Thierry October 15, 2011 at 8:05 am [edit]
Love the article! Although I might be considered young at 43 I do wish for the simple life. And even though the world might spin around me quickly, I choose to slow my little part of it down to enjoy the little things. Thank you for taking the time to share your knowledge.
thanks October 24, 2011 at 11:45 pm [edit]
Thank you, Deane for the lovely article. I’m 38, so hardly close to retirement… if ever…
The knowledge you have imparted gives me confidence I can “survive”, because nature will give me what I need. I pass this knowledge on to my children, along with other “forgotten” skills I know they will appreciate one day.
I will never forget the first time I carefully peeled the flower bud of a thorny thistle growing near my apartment. Harvested the stalk, too. I verified with a local botanist I knew that the plant was, indeed, what I thought it was. Tried a bite… wow! Thistle flower buds are one of my favorite snacks now… I wash them down with berries from a huge Mulberry tree nearby.
Thank you for your hard work. I have learned so much from you.
Billy McCann October 25, 2011 at 10:38 am [edit]
Hey Deane, really enjoyed this article, brought back many fond memories, cutting grass with a push mower, Dad teaching me to shave with a double edge Gillette , one’s that our children today call “ancient”. I also remember the whole family gathered around our only black and white TV in the evening. When I was married in the 80′s, we had 5 TV’s in the house, I hardly ever saw my family.
I am so glad I found your site,looking forward to many future foraging trips on my return to SWF next month. Peace
Dan Culbertson October 27, 2011 at 10:28 am [edit]
At 61 I know exactly what you mean. Somehow we felt all those things were burdens that needed to be eliminated by more convenient options (all less green). It seems so obvious I’ve started using the phrase “convenience kills.” The only thing I question is the disposable diapers issue. There was a big debate in the conservation world years ago about the pros and cons of disposable (landfill space and plastic use) vs cloth (water use to wash). I think the outcome was “It depends on local conditions.” In areas of severe water restrictions disposables come out on top conservation-wise. I’m not sure how rigorous the studies were on that so I’m not totally convinced.
Also, to add to your list, 1n 1950 we averaged half as much meat per person as we do now. I suspect that is not because half the population in 1950 was too poor to eat any meat. Rather we are all (on average) eating way too much meat now than is good for us and the land we would like to preserve. Going back to 1950 diets would be a green initiative in a lot of ways (less food = less energy use). But most people would see that as a lowered lifestyle rather than an enhanced one. My personal opinion is we are all killing ourselves with supposed convenience.
Hi Deane, great article. One of favourite memories is watching a TV show from one of the 3 stations on a Friday with all the family and (heavens!) discussing it. Not sure I would want to eat like I did in the 50s in terms of vegetables except what came from my dad’s garden. Come winter there wasn’t much other than roots but canned stuff. As an fyi in Toronto (Canada) disposable diapers can be put in the “green bin” a composting recycle bin.
Beautiful. My thoughts exactly. Here I sit at 60 wondering how we got so far away from using our heads and our hands and our hearts to communicate and live our lives.
I’m new to your site but will certainly be watching for more.
I’m only 38 and I recall doing MANY of those same activities. ‘Back in the day’, it was either about stewardship or you were just too poor to afford to purchase new, so it was reuse until it was used up. Now-a-days the stewardship idea has been co-opted under the new term ‘green’ – sold as the same name, but not exactly the same idea. The former agenda was for the sake of healthy environment. Period. The latter is how many books a ‘green’ author can sell, or follow a particular ideology, or be cool like the (ridiculous) famous people.
Keep up the outstanding work!!
I thought this article was awesome. When I read this it made me appreciate my family all the more. I am 31 years old and grew up in the times where technology was making everyone lazy. Microwave ovens, pagers, remote control televisions, techno-color, Atari, emails, individual computers (Macintosh being the first) etc… were making their debut during my childhood. I was made fun of as a child because the only new clothes I received were “new to me”. They were “Hand me ups” from my baby sister who happened to be thicker than I was. My cousins were the ones with the television in their room and an Atari.
We didn’t have cable or a remote control tv, so I elected to spend my time outdoors. My mother and grandmother loved to shop at the Thrift store, and that is where my baby sister and I would collect Board games. (I bet we know how to play every Hasbro game out there.)
My grandmother taught us how to tend to the garden. We were the best weed pullers in the “Bay Area”. My grandmother would do all of her cooking by hand, she had us shelling peas, and breaking the green beans. I had no idea where she purchased those humongous sacks of beans, but we would spend a whole day cooking from scratch. My grandfather would place all of the canning my grandmother did, and the enormous amounts of food she prepared in the van, and off we went to feed the homeless.
My grandmother never allowed us to remain idle, nor did she burden us with unlikable tasks. She taught us the art of needlework (cross-stitching, knitting, crochet, latch-hook rugs, and sewing). She even taught us how to wash clothes using the washer board (although we had a very functional washer and dryer.)
I always wondered why it was that my grandparents had money, but refused to use it to make life easier. Now I see, that I wasn’t missing a thing.
I, to this day live life simply. I have a green thumb, do not watch television, and have purposely allowed my phone to be turned off. I still receive my wonderful snail-mail from grandma and granddaddy (actually she signs his name..lol) It makes me feel loved. (I despise email)
Thank you Green-Deane for reminding me…..
Love, Rachelle
Our milk was delivered by the milkman when I was a youngster. “Skimmed Milk” meant that we actually skimmed the layer of cream from the top if we wanted to… and grandmother made butter with it when we did that. Until the mid-1960′s, the “Watermelon Man” and his horse-drawn wagon made his way through our city streets in the summer, and brought with him lots of fresh veggies as they were seasonally available year-’round.
I’m 62 and I still hang my laundry on a clothesline. I have two — one in the backyard in full sun and another in a shed which I use during inclement weather as well as for hanging intimately-worn clothing to dry. I even make our laundry soap… why not? It’s easy, it’s inexpensive, and it does a better job than anything I’ve every bought.
I still buy cloth diapers even though there aren’t any baby-bottoms around here to tend to anymore. They’re used as dish towels, as a replacement for paper towels sometimes, and for covering bread as it’s rising (Yes, I still make home made bread. It’s easy and it’s always delicious). There are dozens of other uses for them, too.
There are many things I truly miss about growing up in the 1950′s and I guess most of it has to do with the self-reliant, yet charitable, way of life lived by nearly everyone I knew then and hardly ever meet now.
Of course, today’s lifestyle does offer a very wonderful thing — the Internet. I don’t have to wait for the library to open, and I can learn as much as I want to learn, 24-hours a day… at this site, for instance.
Hi Deane-
At 42 I was old enough to know my great-grandparents (we were a young family) and learned A LOT from great gran. My 14 year old loves learning “old fashioned wisdom”. We hang our clothes out to dry, hand wash in some cases, use an old milk glass “juicer” to make fruit juice popsicles, wild forage food, homestead garden, cook/bake from scratch, sew ripped clothes back to usage status, recycle fun junk to make clothing/jewelry/household items/gifts and do other fun stuff. My husband, who was brought up with everything new and factory made, is amazed and entertained by this-and is a new convert to this style of living. We feel pretty confident about being self sufficient and save money, too. I would say, though, while its good to know how to do many things by hand and take a break from technology (read a book, ride a bike, etc), it is good to be computer proficient. And, worthwhile to enjoy and learn some of the culture of movies and electronic media…especially the classics.
IMO, it’s about moderation. We own a TV and do family movie night on Friday’s with pizza. We also own a playstaion but it’s limited. We also have a garden, fruit trees, and perenial veggies planted around the house. My 6 year old knows more about identifying wild edibles and fruit trees than most adults. We were out the other day at my wife’s work and he said daddy! Look at all those silverthorns! It was a hedge with 1000′s of little fruits that will be ripe in a month or two. I was amazed how much he has learned with me. Just thought I’d share….
Don’t worry, our generation isn’t completely hopeless! I’d give anything to have some “old-timers” who could teach me how to really live. Technology has it’s place, but I would rather use it to become closer to reality as apposed to further away. Last night I used my father’s new Kindle Fire to look up how to change colors in a scarf I was crocheting (I learned to crochet yesterday!), and now I’m using the internet to learn about the edible and medicinal uses of weeds in my yard. I’m 18, and I care about the world I live in. I’m not “green”, I don’t even recycle. I watch TV, but I’d usually rather make a rag rug, or knit or garden, or tend to my chickens. My friends think it’s funny, or cute, or quaint, but for me, it’s just a better way of life.
Two things are for sure. One is that oil will run out. And slowly the others. Over time the world will become as quiet as the chirping birds again. I hope you get to see that day, and it does not come to us in a catastrophic moment(s) of panic. But it will come and then all these matters of convenience will suddenly weed out the stupid and lazy from the indigenous and industrious, (knowledgeable and prepared). I believe it will happen over time and give people a chance to adapt, because nature has been kind to us for millenia and it will probably continue despite our abuses.
The other thing I know is that you can count on some people to rebel against their digital, convenience based lifestyle. I recently watched a documentary on the Amish and they really hit home with me. They can adopt a modern technology but only if it doesn’t change their overall lifestyle. This means that they will hook up a modern tractor but only to a horse. They will use a phone but will only use it if they walk to the gas station first and really need to use it. Convenience is what nabs people nowadays, and that convenience will dissipate with expense, as cheap energy fluctuates to expensive energy. “Being green” will no longer be a legit thing, it will simply be the only thing because petroleum products will be too expensive.
Perhaps people like me are few and far between. But 10 years ago while I am still interested in many of the same things, I was a person who was impacting the planet in a very extreme way. This lasted up until a year or two ago when I started looking at everything I did. I rebelled against my digital life, and my consumerist life and I believe others are as well.
Simple things can make a huge impact, as I’m sure you know. I now make piles of leaves for compost in my garden, and I pee on them to add nitrogen/nutrients and help them break down. That is everytime I do this I don’t deplete the ground water in my well, and I don’t require the thousands of watts to pump it. I don’t eat meat (long time now) which takes exponentially more land to feed. I am working to grow all of my own food as a lifestyle and small business. Things like not driving to the store for a single item, as you mention. Composting food scraps in my house with worms. I have saved my old refrigerator, havent decided for sure how to use it yet but I’m sure such a structure is useful. And to think somebody wanted me to give it to them for free, minus the costs of having oil cart it around?
I have learned a lot since I began. My generation which is soon taking over as the doers in the world, may still be blinded by convenience, but I think more and more we will learn to value our Time, more than our money. And with time will come thought, and a healthy respect for the energy that goes into certain basic life processes like food.
One last point. I am always coming up with new ways to live. My girlfriend often, these days, lets my new schemes roll off my tongue unnoticed. Then soon learns I am serious, and I get the basic resistance, but this resistance is just our conditioned beliefs that things need to be a certain way. After the initial shock of what I’m saying wears off it seems acceptable, and soon it seems almost natural or perhaps i should say rational. (though maybe we should ask her!!) we are dealing with a culture where it is normal to poop in your drinking water and then send it to the aquifer. so that when we get it back it has to be treated with chlorine. and then we put flouride in for the heck of it… hmmm
Great read, made me testy eyed at times
I do love my gps though
Most of my miles are spent on two wheels but I do have an old Volvo. The odometer is broken so I use a hiking GPS to keep trace of the mileage. I don’t run out of gas too often.
Oh, so agree!! No one thinks about the green issue getting ignored, which is the mountains of trash growing exponentially due to new cell phones and computers every two years. Seriously, who do they think taught them to be green? My office mates frustrate me because I’ve remember being involved in recycling since its inception, and they don’t even know to turn a plastic bottle over to see whether it’s recyclable or not. It’s “easier” just to throw it out. Thank you for writing that article. If nothing else it reminds us of the “less is more” theory when it comes to being truly green.
Bravo Dean, I always enjoy getting into a conversation with a young greeny weeny and going off on them with these same points.
Didn’t you know the young invented everything… recycling to sex…
Speaking of canning Green Deane, have you tried the surinam cherry jam yet? Or are you saving it for friends? heh! Kim
Saving it for the right piece of bread….
great article,although i must say i am no where near retirement age,i clothe diaper with pins,and there is an abundance of us who do so.unfortunately many people make it illegal to hang your clothing especially in “white areas trying to keep black island “ghetto folk ‘ out. there is so uch we did AS A CHILD WHEN I WAS YOUNGER,and its illegal or deamed unfit now,thats why i love going home to the islands where the american influence hasnt completely taking over natural ways of life.
Oh, for real. The present *sucks*, let’s be clear. Climate change accelerating rapidly, pointless wars that distract us from our slide into third-world status while we continue to buy more and throw away more and have less access to the things that really matter like healthcare and education.
But let’s not romanticize the past. The 20th century gave us roads full of leaded-gasoline-using cars with no meaningful emissions standards until nearly the end of the century. It gave us the ability to kill every living thing on the planet. It gave us the suburb, and with it the suburban lawn. It gave us PCBs, factory farms, population explosion…I’m just throwing out the first things that come to my mind. And those are just the environmental ones–no need to get started on the racism, sexism, ableism, etc, etc. Early- to mid-20th-century America was sure a nice place to live if you were a white guy with no mental or physical disabilities.
The destruction of the earth started in earnest way back at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, with the invention of a new world of extractive and exploitative industries all devoted to giving consumers what they want. Pretty green dress, shame about the arsenic used to dye it? So no, the past was often not environmentally friendly, sorry.
None of which is to say we *shouldn’t* go back to home-canning, reusing consumer goods, etc. Just lets understand that we’re taking what’s good from the past, and trying to jettison the rest.
Hey deane, totally agree with you there, I’m only 24 and have always been fascinated with the way things used to be done, I’m not saying we didn’t havre a tv growing up but my dad wouldnt let us watch it til saturday morning.i get so sick of seeing over weight people and kids and on top of that they complain how hard their life is. I wanted to start a reality show for ungrateful kids and put them back in time where you had to walk to the well to get water you had to bust your back plowing fields, shoot your own meat, grow your dinner make and fix your own clothes!i wonder how many people would watch that? And now everyone thinks calouses on your hands and feet are a medical problem!, oh lord I could go onfor a while but like my wife says”you were born 200 years too late” I love your website and especially the tidbits about how the natives did it for generations.keep it up we need more people sharing actual useable knowledge today,i hope to impart some of my passion to my soon arriving little boy. Maybe we can keep the past alive somehow so he can share some of the fun we all had growing up in the woods
I’m not so sure it’s about being born too late. It’s more like knowing how some things are done now are not necessarily the best way to do things.
Deane,
Awesome article – it brings back so many memories of my youth. My Grandad and my dad and I built barns, and they built a log cabin that was a complete house on the inside – I remember pulling nails and bending them straight. My dad owned a grocery store (And still does, still works at it, and he is nearly eighty) because “people always have to eat” – that was his logic, and it put five kids through school. I remember canning, and picking berries… And playing real games with real human people! I am a computer engineer, and sometimes I think I only contributed to the problem! At any rate I have been getting back into restoring and experimenting with old tube radios and Ham equipment… Things from a bygone time. Thanks again. -David T. McKee