Technically I was born in the fifties, now those two and a half months hold no recollection in my fleeting memory. As a matter of fact I have very little recollection until the mid sixties and most of them are vague and not pertinent to this story. Come the end of the groovy sixties and the early seventies is when the glory of my existence began to take shape. Through the Woodstock era of hippies, peace signs, Vietnam War demonstrations and the advice to “Make Love not War” began an environmental movement. This wasn’t the first time that recycling was possible, but a time when it started to get some wind behind its wings. But even at that time it wasn’t vogue or socially responsible to recycle, most people weren’t too concerned about global warming or saving the environment. That doesn’t mean we didn’t do it – it was just in fewer areas and for different reasons.
Being the eighth of ten children we seemed to recycle clothes quite a bit, we just called them hand-me-downs. As boys this was no big deal, as a matter of fact no one ever noticed if I wore the same clothes five days in a row, let alone if your brother wore it a year ago. But with girls it’s a whole different ballgame – I can’t wear that! I wore it three weeks ago. Six of my siblings were girls and if they had coordinated it correctly they could have acted like they had quite the wardrobe – I guess it wouldn’t have worked because they weren’t all the same size at the same time. This happened with our kids as well, which normally was all right, but occasionally one of our daughters wanted a hand-me-down without her sister’s permission. This would happen after the older one had already left for school and the other one had every intention to be home and changed before her sister came back, which didn’t always work as planned which led to an emotional melt down. The melt down usually come from the one that didn’t wear the outfit and now can’t for who knows how long. A co-worker told me that now-days the boys act more like the girls of old, we only have one son and as far as I know he never tried to wear his sister’s clothes. His sons try to wear each others clothes with out permission and the melt down can lead to fist-to-cuffs.
Recycling also happened with pop bottles – everyone recycled them because they gave you a nickel to do so. Of course I didn’t understand that the pop cost more than it should have and in reality it was my nickel I was getting back. The greatest is when you found a bottle that you didn’t buy - it’s like finding free money. When I had one I needed to protect it or my brother would cash it in for me. One year I was part of a organization that had a pop bottle drive to raise money – I guess if your planning to give something in the first place you might as well give pop bottles then you don’t have to pack them into the store yourself.
Another area was newspapers – you just needed a ton of them to make a difference. Every non-profit organization needs a way to raise money. Whether they’re trying to change the world by discovering a cure for cancer or a scout troop trying to change the lives of a few young boys around a campfire, there is a need to raise money.
Long before there were blue bins at everyone’s house to deposit your papers in, our scoutmasters came up with a brilliant idea. We built a shack that was about four or five feet square and about six feet high that had a swinging door on the front panel allowing anyone to donate their newspapers to the Boy Scout of America. These papers were then collected every other Saturday and taken to a company to make insulation. The problem was when the papers were deposited they would scatter in the shed making a mess. It took a lot of time to sort and stack the papers in preparation to be transported to the proper location. After a couple of months of this, our leaders came up with another great idea - I think they thought it was great because it made less work for them. The shack was in front of Smith’s market on fourth north and was approximately half way between the Junior High and our homes. Since we were walking home anyway, they needed volunteers to drop by the shack each day to stack the papers, making it quicker and easier to pick them up and allowed more papers to be deposited.
Now for the most part twelve-year-old boys don't volunteer for anything, unless food is involved, and this responsibility was to be done without the leaders that could provide such a treat. So you will understand that after a few weeks of pulling teeth for volunteers the scoutmasters were surprised at troop meetings that almost every scout was raising their hands to take a turn. Now at first I'm sure they thought we had rounded a corner in life and were becoming responsible citizens. Now deep down we were great responsible citizens in the making. But, at this time there was something else motivating the masses.
If I recall at that time USU had around ten to twelve thousand students. With more than half the students being male, occasionally some of them would look for a little entertainment or light reading. For that matter, with all the reading at school, many decided that they just wanted to look at some pictures more than read the articles, some of which folded out to be larger than the magazines itself. Now many such magazines seem to come out quite often, and after you have looked at one for a while some people wanted to get a new one. The question then arises what do you do with the old one? Being young intelligent minds and looking to the future you can understand why many were environmentally conscious and wanted to recycle or make insulation. Well the best way to do that was to donate to troop 5's newspaper shed. Why throw it away when you can enlighten the minds of twelve and thirteen year old boys trying to make money for their upcoming scout camp.
When it became common knowledge among the scouts that the college students were concerned about the environment, you can see why we scouts wanted to get involved and take our turn stacking papers on a daily basis. This worked well until our scoutmasters changed the locks for some reason, then it just took longer on Saturday mornings to stack the papers with their supervision. I'm sure it was just so we would do it right the first and only time.
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