One Word: Plastics
I haven't been in to Manhattan for over a week to shoot and I'm starting to get a little wiggy about it. But, Sunday is Miss Harvey's birthday and it's a big one. We are going to a wedding on Saturday in Manhattan so she rented us a room for two nights at the Waldorf-Astoria®. Two nights and one whole day of nothing but Manhattan to shoot, you can bet I'm going bring more cameras then god intended. I'll probably even bring the Lubital, which hardly ever makes it in because it is so boxy and heavy.
For two days, we are so going to live a different life. Then it all comes to a crashing end with a 2:00pm dental appointment on Monday. This time, Martha will actually get to go to one of my dentists. Apparently I have a mouth full of cavities and I see nothing but a horror show headed my way and while I'm glad that she will be there, I know she's going to be pissed sitting in the waiting room with our luggage. The cool thing is instead of calling her from the dental chair and bursting into tears with horrible news, I can just walk out and drop the money bomb.
After that, we then get to ride the path, to the train, to the car, to the thruway to home. Awesome. Like I said, crashing end.
Big news around here is that we got Reverse Osmosis. Woo, hoo. But seriously, this will cut down enormously on the amount of plastic bottles this house brings home every week. We recycle, but you know, I lived in Jersey long enough to know that just because you put you shit out on the curb does not mean that it actually ends up in the right place. Besides plastic does not totally break down. It just gets smaller and smaller.
I remember when there was hardly any plastic in our lives.
Milk, juice, RC Cola, mayonnaise and Listerine® were all sold in glass. Toothpaste, TV Dinners, cream cheese, fancy cheese spreads, (including Velveeta®) were packaged in foil packets. Food was stored in foil, wax paper and meat was either cut or ground fresh and then wrapped in butcher paper. Lunchmeat was also cut fresh, wrapped in a wax paper and then in butcher paper.
Boy, you can really tell that I grew up in White Land or as I like to call it, Mayonnaise Land.
Almost everything was in a cardboard box of some kind and potato chips and pretzels could be bought in large tin drums.
Of course, this was way back in the day when you could smoke in grocery stores. I remember riding in the child seat, sitting next to the little red beanbag ashtray that my mom had with her everywhere she went. She carried an ashtray, isn't that the oddest thing? Anyway, when we were at Kroger's sometimes she would accidentally singe my leg when she bent over to pick something off the shelves. Whenever this happened, she would give me a small brown bag of M&M's to eat.
At the check out all of our crap was put in paper bags and then a bag boy would go out to the parking lot with us and load the bags into our excessively large trunk. When he was finished, mom would tip the kid and then slide into our gas-guzzling Thunderbird. We would then ride off into the sunset without wearing seatbelts.
Every mother had at least one piece of Tupperware in her kitchen but that was it. No one lived by plastic like they do now. Even at cookouts we used paper plates with real silverware. Hardly anything in the kitchen was plastic. I remember when my mom and dad bought a new dishwasher and mom tragically put a knife with a rubber handle in there; it melted stinking up the whole house and ruining the washer. It was winter, we had to open all the windows to air out the house, and my dad was so very, very pissed. Pissed at my mom, pissed at the usage of rubber and pissed that it was winter. It's a good memory as most of them are. |
The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee
