The world that I grew up in was much simpler than the one in which I raised my children. I’m not saying that it was better. Just simpler.
You knew where you stood.
In school your teacher was most likely a woman and the principal a man.
We were brought up on the Dick and Jane books where family meant Mom and Dad (white) and three kids, a dog and a cat. Dad went to work and mom wore an apron and cooked.
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It was before the days of seatbelts and bike helmets.
To be gay meant something entirely different from what it means today.
Farmers grew wheat, the computer age was yet to be and terms such as lentils, climate change, the ozone layer, chickpeas and environmentally friendly were virtually unknown.
Why, in those days, garbage was garbage. If something was no longer useful, out it went.
Have you noticed that today we have garbage and we have recycling? Reduce, reuse, recycle goes the mantra.
We don’t just throw things out any more. We sort them.
Garbage here, recycling there – in assorted clusters of cans and bottles and jars, cardboard and newspaper.
What has happened, of course, is that over the years we have become the disposable society.
Blame it on women going out to work. They no longer had as much time to cook, so frozen foods were invented. More packaging. More items on shelves. More packaging. More stuff to get rid of. More trees used.
What used to be called dumps where I grew up and nuisance grounds where my husband grew up are now called landfills, for obvious reasons. We have been filling them with junk.
Burning at our town landfill site, forbidden by law, was happening too frequently and steps had to be taken.
An education campaign ensued, urging people to use the town’s recycling centre.
A supervisor has been hired for the landfill site. She is a courageous person who has been known to refuse garbage – sorry, recyclable material masquerading as garbage – and send it back to the recycling centre in town.
My laundry room looks like a landfill site with large crocks holding newspapers and magazines and boxes holding cans and jars and plastic bags full of drink cans and bottles.
Sometimes I look longingly back to the days when I could put everything in a plastic garbage bag and put it at the curb.
Or even, it must be said, throw it into the burning barrel. Not environmentally friendly, I admit, but so much simpler.
