In the line at the store, a young cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.

The woman apologized to him and explained, “We didn’t have the green thing back in my day.”

The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment.”

He was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day. 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.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store. 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 throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. My Mother sewed all our clothes on a foot treadle sewing machine. She used extremely worn out clothes, and fabric scraps, stitched into quilts for our beds in winter. I think that my Mother invented recycling.

But that old lady is right; we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

We took our shoes to the shoemaker, to be “half-soled” or “reheeled”, instead of throwing them out and getting new.

Back then, we had one radio, in the house, in one room. 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 a wadded up old newspaper 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 walking, riding a second hand bicycle, planting our Victory gardens, kids playing outside with jump ropes, hide&seek, etc., 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 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 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. (My Mom never drove.) 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 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint. We didn’t even have Pizza joints, or any other kind of junk fast food. My Mother cooked 100% from scratch, 3 meals a day, and it was beyond good.And, not one scrap of food was wasted, it became soup, or stew for next day.

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?