My story about life
before the green thing seems to have struck a memory nerve with many readers.
It got me thinking about many other things that could have been included. It
looks like I need to take another journey down the road before we had the green
thing.
How many of you now pack
stuff away in large plastic containers and store them in the basement or a
closet? Back before the green thing, we stored, and still store, things in
empty apple boxes and boxes that held reams of paper. We got many of the apple
boxes from Linda’s father. He worked in the food service area at UW-Platteville
and retrieved many empty apple boxes that they threw away. They were perfect
for storage. We were all able to recycle those boxes and we still make use of
them. They were also free as opposed to buying plastic containers. I also
stored stuff in the empty boxes that paper came in that I used in my
advertising business. I still use them. Saving empty cardboard boxes to store
things in, has always been a way of life for most rural people.
When our socks got holes
in them, we didn’t throw them in the trash and buy new ones. Ma or Grandma Inga
would “darn” the socks–patch the hole using a needle and thread. This was done
by hand. It didn’t need to be the same color thread as the sock you were
repairing. Nobody was going to see the sock except us. I have no idea why it
was called darning socks. Maybe someone once said, “Darn it, I have to patch
those darn socks again.” I know someone out there must have the answer for me.
Does anyone still take the time to darn socks or have we become a throw-away
society these days?
It’s too bad we didn’t
know about the go green thing and recycling back then.
Lets talk about feed
sacks. Yes, those sacks that came filled with calf feed. When I was young, they
came in colorful, patterned sacks. When they were empty, Grandma Inga cut the
sacks apart and sewed shirts for us kids. She also made colorful dresses–those
weren’t for us boys. I wonder if kids today would wear a feed sack shirt or
dress? Maybe if we stitched a designer tag on it, we could make a fortune.
I guess wearing those
shirts was doing our part for the green thing even if we didn’t realize it at
the time.
When my great
grandfather, Hans O. Sherpe, was married, his wedding suit was made from burlap
feed bags. The Sorenson family who owned the farm where we now live, made his
suit for him by cutting apart burlap bags, dying them black, and sewing the
pieces together into a suit. I imagine my great grandfather never felt prouder
than when he wore that handsome suit. Jacob Sorenson, the son of that family,
later sold their farm to my father. That family story makes a nice connection
to recycled feed sacks. Looks like they were living the go green thing back
then.
My parents didn’t throw
coffee grounds or ashes from the stove away. They were dumped in a pile that
was spread on the garden in the spring. It made great fertilizer. Now we buy
expensive fertilizer that comes in sacks that we throw away. And just think, we
didn’t know about the green thing in those days.
We also saved the empty
shells from eggs and crushed them up. They were then fed back to the chickens
as a source of calcium to form good, strong shells on their eggs that would
stand up to the stress of laying and handling without breaking. It sure beat
throwing the shells down a garbage disposal as people do these days.
I looked up on the
Internet, ways to go green and save money. One way was to take shorter showers
to reduce water use and save energy. I guess we were way ahead of our time. We
didn’t have indoor plumbing until I was a sophomore in high school. Needless to
say we didn’t take showers. We took a bath about once a week in a tub. We got
to share the water until it got too dirty to get clean in. At least we were
saving the planet from running out of water by only taking one bath a week.
Talk about conserving water and energy. We definitely did our part.
They say that air-conditioning
can be the largest expense on your electric bill. We didn’t have to worry about
that because most people we knew when I was growing up didn’t have an air-conditioner.
I think it seems hotter these days because we’re always going from cool air-conditioned
buildings and cars to the hot outside air. It makes the heat seem much worse. I
think it also leads to summer colds. We used to open up all the windows and
hope a breeze would take some of the heat out of the house. It was kind of nice
drifting off to sleep with the sound of the wind in the trees, the windmill
pumping, and the crickets serenading us.
We may not have been
aware of the green thing, but we were living it.
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