The Fall of an Empire… By Toilet Paper?
Sometimes I look around me and I’m amazed, and saddened, by things I see. I know, I’m not the first one to broach this subject, and I’m sure I won’t be the last.
What I see is a soaring divorce rate, children being given away, the elderly are abandoned… and the list goes on. You don’t have to look to the murder statistics to see that our society has lost respect for the human life.
Now, most of you that have read my articles before know that I usually don’t choose such a dire subject but I am going to look at this through my own glasses.
Decades ago, when the United States was at it’s best, (before apathy set in), and was most admired by the rest of the world, everything had value. Very little was wasted at that time, we either used it again or found another use for it. I can’t think of too many things that were tossed out after their original use was used up… (Well, except for masticated food maybe, but we won’t go there.) Have I lost you yet? Okay, I’ll try to explain it all… well, most of it anyway.
I can remember milk bottles, the ones delivered right to your doorstep. Mm, that was so good then, it was colder that way. (I slipped from the subject there, sorry.) When you emptied the bottle, you rinsed it out and set it out, with the others, and the milkman picked it up, during the next delivery, and guess what? They cleaned it out and used it again! Even the little holder the bottles were delivered in were used and reused. Shoot, before that they had milk cans, I think they were two gallon cans with the lid chained to them… used again and again, no waste that way.
What else? Ah, soda bottles, of course. When I was a kid I can remember walking down to “Charlie’s” store, (we didn’t have “Circle K’s or 7-11’s pretty much everything was mom-and-pop), and I would get a Pepsi for 10 cents plus a 2 cent deposit. (All right, no age comments here!) When I accumulated several bottles I could take to Charlie’s and cash them in… and buy something else, and the bottles were used again.
Everything had value, a primary value and a secondary value. We were, sort of, trained not to waste, to be ingenious enough to find a use for things, old and new. I guess we were like pack rats in a way. Old clothing, for instance, if your old shirt wasn’t passed down to a younger sibling, it was cut into strips and woven into such things as a throw rug, a blanket or whatever you wanted to make.
Old coffee cans were turned into storage cans in the garage, shoe boxes were loaded with old papers or pictures and taped up and stored away.
We kept old bikes to fix up not-so-old bikes; old lawn mowers were sharpened and used longer, (we pushed these babies.) We hung on to things; everything had a value of some sort.
Then… one day it happened… a new term was introduced and the world, as we knew it, changed; but was it for the better? Oh, the term? “It’s disposable”. Or, just toss it away, any way you want to say it; we turned into a disposable world of cheap, plastic, throwaway containers. If it wasn’t plastic, it was some form of cardboard, and you could throw it away.
Soon we had disposable diapers, disposable drink containers, paper bags, plastic bags, medical instruments (use’m once and throw’m away), throwaway clothing for crying out loud! Then there was disposable underwear, edible und… uhm; we’ll talk about that another time.
So there it was, everything was cheap and disposable. Add to that, the whiz-thru junk food, (back to the edibles, wink, wink), then bundle it all together and bingo; a society that had no need for keepers
So I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that we’ve become a disposable society. Get tired of it? Throw it out! Don’t want be bothered by petty (family) problems? Toss’m aside and move on. Old lady, or old man, looks worn out? Trash him, or her, and get a new one. Why not? After all, it’s what commercialism and corporate America has been pounding in our heads for nigh-on 40 years now.
You know where this all started don’t you? Toilet paper! Yup, the first thing that was used once and thrown away. Before that we used that old Sear’s catalog… one last time.
Sigh.
I miss my Radio Flyer Red Wagon, although the only original part was the uh… it was the rear… well, something was original.
