Page 14 - S36.Autumn 2019

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Southington Magazine — Autumn 2019
hydrangea. That monster’s not giving more than a few blooms.
SEPTEMBER. My heart is heavy with the onset of fall. I scroll through photos of happier times, when color, vibrancy and chlorophyll were everywhere I turned. By now, it’s over. Cool nights grip what is left of still-green tomatoes and puny peppers. I’ll har- vest and use what I can. Hey — seed catalogs arrive right after Christmas!
WHATEVER DID WE DO BEFORE PLASTIC BAGS?
So, the single-use plastic bag is gone from stores. Or they’re 10 cents. I can’t remember. I re- cently sorted through my crumpled collection of reusable grocery bags in the back of my car, and re- solved never to forget to bring them into the stores. But lo! I keep finding very cool, unique totes around the house to use instead. The giant canvas Ralph Lauren bag I got for a $10 donation at the outlet years ago; the natural cotton bag with Woman on a Mission printed on it (silly, but brand new in the back of the closet.) Then there is the oversized tote I made myself from an actual burlap coffee bean bag. With Guatemalan printing on it! Hoo boy. I am gon- na impress those cashiers down at the Stop & Shop.
Off I go. I bag my own groceries. Feeling so cool
and fashionable and GREEN. I load the car and pro- ceed to my next stop. Uh yeah. I’m cool, all right. There are minute burlap fibers covering my black work pants. I look like the outside of a kiwi fruit.
But what did we baby boomers do before plas- tic bags? Not much effort was put into saving the planet back then. Think back to mid-century sum- mers. Our moms had the butcher wrap the meat in paper. (So what if it got a little freezer burnt?) Some- one bagged their groceries in brown paper bags. The milkman swapped out empty milk bottles with full ones.
After shopping with us kids in tow, Mom loaded us into the gas-guzzling station wagon with no seat belts in that funky, rear-facing third seat. She’d drive home and whip up a dinner of processed what- ever. After dinner, Dad would go out and burn the week’s trash in the backyard barrel! They’d send us out to play, but not after dousing us in a fog of DEET to keep away the mosquitos, chiggers, ticks and chinch bugs.
And we lived without the hermetic seal of Zip Loc bags. Mom packaged our bologna sandwiches in Cut-Rite wax paper bags. You can still get them.
Crazy, right? We lived and we’re still here. We’ve come a long, green way since then. Ditching plastic bags can’t be that troublesome.