RECYCLING, HABIT OR A WAY OF LIFE?

Just finished the first load of dishes and have the pots and pans soaking while the dishes, glasses, and silverware drain—and dry a little.  I never do dishes in the sink that I don’t think of my mother.  When she did dishes, if it was on, she wouldn’t miss her radio program, “Beulah.”  Other times, when I helped by drying and putting away, we would play games.  My favorite was when we would guess the song the other one hummed, and then we would often go off on a tangent and sing the song together.  I learned a lot of songs of her generation that way, and she learned some of mine.

I think I got into the practice of recycling by watching her when I was a little girl.  I can still see her at the sink, removing labels from the cans she had opened for supper. She’d already rinsed them when she had made supper, adding that bit of water to whatever she was making—and, yes, I picked up that habit, too.  When the dishes were done, Mom would wash them in the dishwater.  After they were dry, she would cut the bottom off the can, of course, that was way back when you could cut the bottom off the cans, slip both lids inside the can, and then step on the can and flatten it.  Many housewives were following the same practice, for this was during the war, and metal was in demand for defense.

We kids did our part for the war effort, too.  In those days, chewing gum was quite popular among the younger crowd.  And chewing gum was packaged a little differently than it is today.  Each of the sticks were wrapped in a paper that had a metal coating.  It took a little practice, but the skill of removing the foil from the paper could be learned.  We would gather these flimsy offerings into a ball.  Some of the older neighborhood kids had balls that were almost the size of a baseball!  That represented a lot of gum chewing!!  I never did know how the kids recycled those metal offerings for the war effort.

Sometimes we would take the foil wrapping and chew it.  That was rather electrifying, especially right after a trip to the dentist which included new metal fillings.

Recycling.

I remember when milk was delivered to the door in glass bottles—with a cardboard stopper.  The milkman would hop off his truck swinging his wire basket tote holding the milk for the household.  Most everything came in quarts or pints.  He’d take it to the door and leave it on the porch or stoop, pick up the empties that were waiting there, and then return to his truck.

When I was in sixth grade, we had a contest in our class to see who could write the best letter to one of the local milk companies asking if we could visit them.  It so happened, I won that contest, and had my letter sent to them.  I remember that part of the tour we had was past the machines used to wash and sterilize those bottles the milkmen had returned to the dairy.

We kids did our part in the recycling effort by scouring the neighborhood for pop bottles that were thrown away.  Pop came in a small size and a large size.  If we returned a small size bottle to the store, we’d get two cents per bottle.  For five bottles we could get a bottle of pop.  If we were really lucky and found a large bottle, we would get five cents as a refund.  We had a NEHI carbonated beverage company just outside the commercial part of town.  We passed this building every time we walked to town, and often stopped to watch through its big windows the bottles being washed, dried, and then filled with cola. 

Of course, this was when the beverage companies were permitted to wash, sterilize, and reuse the bottles.  And before plastic and aluminum took the place of glass.

I also remember when the daily newspapers for the month were stacked and tied with cord and placed at the curb for the trucks to come along and pick them up.  I had almost forgotten about those big trucks.  I wonder if it had also been for the war effort.

Today, we are encouraged to recycle “to save our planet.”  The only trouble is, that it is often difficult to find someone willing to take the recycling, or are so selective that you kind of wonder if it is worth it. 

For instance, in our area, the refuse companies will pick up recycling within the city limits only, but not in any of the rural areas, even though it is the same company that serves both.  The one pick-up station we visit is ten miles from our home, and also has its limitations: number one and number two plastic beverage containers, NO LIDS, aluminum cans, and glass bottles.  The area in Florida we lived in before we moved to Pennsylvania had a change in companies.  The new refuse company that won the bid for the whole county, accepts plastics up through number seven, aluminum included things like clean disposable pie pans and even clean cooking foil, and glass is glass.  They even welcome Pizza boxes.  They picked up household refuse twice a week, once a week they also picked up recycling (in a separate container), and once every two weeks they would pick up lawn trash (weeds, pruning, etc.).  And if you had large objects to get rid of, like a chair, couch, lawn timbers, once a month you could call and make arrangements to have it picked up and hauled away.  All included in the reasonable quarterly fee.  Now, if they had resources that were taking the recycled materials, why can’t local refuse companies find enough users to widen the articles they accept?  And maybe even be willing to pick them up, since the recyclers are probably already their customers? 

How do you feel about recycling?

   

GOD’S MIRACULOUS WHITE STUFF

It’s snowing!  The first snowfall of the year—and it’s only the first of November.

I love the first snowfall.  It makes me feel like getting out our old thirty-three-and-a-third vinyl record and playing Jackie Gleason’s orchestral version of Snowfall.

It also reminds me of the snowfalls when I was a kid.  I remember evenings when seven or eight of us neighborhood youngsters would congregate in the road at the corner under the arc-light and race around trying to catch those big, fluffy flakes in our mouths.  We’d giggle and laugh and thrill to the joy of the moment.

But these flakes aren’t those nice, huge, delicious ones.  Nor are they the little tiny balls that usually are blown in with the wild winds.  They are the small ones that surprise us by silently dropping down.  You know, the ones that are just the colder side of raindrops.  But glancing out the window, I see that every now and then, one of those large flakes is beginning to make an appearance.

For those of you who remember the boxes of laundry detergent our mothers used to use on washday, we would categorize those big fluffy flakes as Ivory Flakes, and the tiny round balls that would come barreling in as Ivory Snow.

Couldn’t help checking out the window again, and the flakes are getting larger.  This morning started with a heavy frost.  So the snow that is falling on the shed roofs, porches, and railings is beginning to pile up.  What’s landing on the grass, roads, or in the dirt hasn’t started gathering, yet.

I remember, as a kid, the snows would be almost thigh-deep.  We haven’t had snows that deep for a long time.  I have to kind of chuckle when I consider this.  I remember seeing a Family Circle cartoon where the father and his small son are walking side-by-side in the snow.  The father says something like I just did, how he remembered the snows being deeper.  The picture depicted the snow to be about knee-high for dad, but son was plowing through almost waist high white stuff!

Oh, and the fun we had playing in the snow!

Of course we did all the normal things one does in the snow—made angles and snowmen, threw snowballs, built forts, and even shoveled walks.

Our road was a street that cut in half the rise of a hill in the eastern residential area of our small city, DuBois.  Over by our favorite arc-light there was a crossroads.  Third Street, our street, was a paved road that, at this point, went up the hill to another level of our street.  Sherman Avenue crossed our road there and was a dirt alley that went on up the hill.  But the part that went down to the bottom level was paved.  Combined, it was a dandy place for sledding.  We knew we could be classified as “one of the bigger kids” when we had mastered the maneuver of coming down Third Street's hill, making the turn onto Sherman and, flying past all the houses, continue down the lower hill.  At the bottom of Sherman, we either made another left turn onto Lakeview Drive and ended up near the junction of the main road, or we ended up on the bank of the Tannery Dam which bordered the far side of Lakeview. 

Eventually, the city more-or-less discouraged that challenge by designating a good long run on Fourth Street, the upper level of the hill that ended in a nice field rather than near traffic or the dam.

About that time, my father built us a bobsled.  If I remember correctly, it could hold six or seven of us at a time.  Both of my older sisters actually mastered it’s steering.  I don’t remember why I never did.  Maybe it was because by the time I was old enough to do so, the weather pattern had changed and there wasn’t enough snow to make getting the bobsled down from the garage rafters worthwhile.

The flakes are now getting thicker and are starting to outline the individual branches of the trees of the woods on the lower part of our property.  If this keeps up, and the wind doesn’t start blowing, by evening we might have a lacy patchwork of limbs, branches and twigs to enjoy.  Especially if there is a full moon.

Our daughter-in-law was born and raised in the south.  Although she would like to have more, she’s had very little experience with living in and dealing with snow.  So when we do get a snowfall, we tease that she must be thinking of us.

Just checked the window again, and as happens with so many “first snows,” it has already not only stopped snowing, but also melted from the porches, railings, and many of the shed roofs.  Guess we will have to wait for another snow before we can enjoy moonlit lacy branches.