Recycling? Bin There Done That

I enjoy walking to the mailbox.

It’s a pleasant task.

I also enjoy visiting the recycling bins conveniently located behind Hartland University, the local dispensary of adult beverages, whose Facebook post during a recent March thunder blizzard (Thunder, wind and snow – woohoo!) read: “Hartland University will be open and on time today. All classes will be in person; no e-learning will be necessary.”

I grab the recycling from my car’s wayback and dump it into the bins whenever I can combine it with another reason to be in the neighborhood.

I get a kick out of recycling.

Don’t yuck my yum.

It was a time before there were too many TV channels. It was before Ronco created the Recycl-O-Matic that could make a Rubik’s Cube out of a Chevy Vega. It was long before there were life-canceling headphones. Our car had what we called a 4 by 40 air conditioner. We rolled all four crank windows down and drove 40 mph. We pulled open the floor vents and pushed open the vent window (wing vent, wing window or fly window), a triangular window that went away with the popularity of air conditioning. I wonder why it was called a fly window. Did it offer an escape hatch for a trespassing fly? I think smokers might have used it for the discharge of cigarette smoke. The rolling, pulling and pushing of windows and vents were all done manually. Once those chores were done, the driver rested an elbow on the open window of the driver’s side and got a nice tan on the left arm.

I grew up in a family that used and reused what they had. Today, it might be called repurposing or upcycling. “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without” was a popular saying in my tribe.

The helmsman (Dad) and the helmswoman (Mom) of the family ship came at recycling from different directions. Dad recycled by throwing nothing away. He didn’t have to throw things away – he had a shed to put them in. He kept everything because “You never know when you might need that.”

My mother had a mailbox and an outhouse. The backhouse was a three-holer because we were rich. Two holes were targeted for adult derrieres, and one was sized for a child’s south end, which fostered family togetherness. It was a place to exchange cute stories. A quiet place to study on things. Novels might have described it as noble, calm and peaceful – or, at least, breathtaking. The outhouse was situated at the edge of the woods. It required a walk, so we got exercise and added steps to our nonexistent fitness trackers.

How did we get a toilet that sometimes required snowshoes to get to? We’d won a contest.

The mailbox lurked at the far end of our driveway. It was called on by a rural mail carrier who waved at everyone because he was paid by the wave. The mail was an essential part of the day. Letters, bills, picture postcards, magazines, newspapers and retail therapy in the form of catalogs.

Catalogs were thick and heavy, and came all the way from Sears, Monkey Ward’s, Penney’s, Spiegel’s and Herter’s. Those catalogs found their way into the most rural and battered of mailboxes. Each wish book was an enumeration of items arranged systematically with descriptive details of each. But they were more than reading and wishing materials. They were free toilet paper.

Once they were wished upon as if they were falling stars, the catalogs were recycled into toilet paper. Into the outhouse they went. They waited in a pile until they were called to active duty. Each day became Catalog Appreciation Day. We avoided the catalogs’ slick pages and treacherous staples like the plague. That’s how we avoided things in those days—like the plague. Peach papers were the gold standard for things turned into toilet paper. When the door of an outhouse holding a stack of peach papers was opened, a choir of angels sang.

An almanac hung by a string attached to a nail on the wall, so people knew it was the Batt Library and wouldn’t use it for anything other than reading.

I recycle. It’s a family tradition.