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Hello! And welcome! You’re listening to Song Stories, Quiet Stories podcast episode 23, Earth Mom. I’m your long lost host, Carolyn Murset.
Today is Blue Can Recycling Day in my little town in southwest Utah. I look forward to this every other Thursday morning event that began here just a few years ago, so much that I wonder why I haven’t had my picture taken beside that royal blue 43 inch high polyethylene hinged bin. Wouldn’t it be cool if it were made from recycled materials?
My environmentally conscious, almost tree-hugging inclination began with a fire. In 1969, the Taos New Mexico Plaza Movie Theatre caught fire.
This was the place where on Saturday afternoons, my dad would drop me and a sibling or two off at the southwest corner of Taos Plaza, the town square, with enough money to buy a movie ticket to watch scary movies and to share a bag of popcorn.
This is where we watched Edgar Allen Poe’s the Raven, starring Vincent Price and Boris Karloff, and the Pit and the Pendulum, also starring Vincent Price. Some of my adult issues could be explained by my watching these terrifying classics as an impressionable child.
Anyway. Because of that Thanksgiving Day fire, we Taosenos were deprived of a movie theater experience, unless we drove to Santa Fe or even Albuquerque, but our family only drove there to buy supplies for my dad’s plumbing and heating business.
So my ambitious dad’s solution, as the leader of our local church congregation, was to rent old films and turn our chapel’s cultural hall into a Friday night theater. I’m assuming my dad was the leader then because during his lifetime, he had the responsibility of leading our congregation five different times, either as Branch President, or as Bishop. We’re Mormons, members of the Cgurch of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Customarily in the early days of going to the movies, before the featured film began, the audience first watched a short film or a cartoon.
During World War 2, the short film was a newsreel to keep the audience up to date on the events of the war. Watching the world events unfold as moving images provided a more reel experience (yeah, that was a pun) than reading about them in the newspaper or listening to them on the radio. Not everyone had a radio, or had access to a newspaper back then.
I was a young teen when I attended the church hall movie theater, which had the best concession stand. People attending brought homemade treats for the bake sale to pay for the movie rental? and I still remember Mrs. Labrum’s double decker fudge.Sigh.
Again and anyway, my dad also rented short films to project onto the church hall movie screen that hung from the ceiling above the stage, until you somehow grabbed that metal loop and pulled it down.
One film that made such an impression on my 13 year old mind was of a family (who were actors trying to prove a point, and with me, they did.) living at an urban landfill. Their home had walls, and window openings but no roof. They lived among the piles and piles of trash.
That impression of the disturbing images didn’t translate into action until a decade later when I was married and a young mother.
My first effort was waddling with my good sport of a husband to a fabric store on Center Street, Provo, Utah (and there were three of those stores, just on that street) to buy diaper flannel. Once home, we folded and zig zagged the edges of the fabric and made an impressive stack of diapers, that we’d later fold into kite shape before placing our clean bottomed baby on top. Then with two large diaper safety pins, we’d fasten the diaper snuggly around our baby’s bottom, and then cover the diaper with vinyl diaper covering with elasticized leg openings and waist, and hope the diaper would stay dry longer that a few minutes.
Disposable diapers were a new invention in 1979, when our first child was born, and they had no elastic around the legs and waist. They were folded, and you still had to place those vinyl coverings over the diaper. They were so ineffective that we only used them when travelling. It was out of the question to bring the diaper pail. In that pail, that we kept next to the changing table, we placed the wet diapers and the other diapers that weren’t only wet in. We had to wear rubber gloves and preclean them in the toilet before placing them in the diaper pail that had water with Dreft safe for babies detergent sprinkled inside. So disposable diapers served a limited purpose when they first came into being.
Parenting and diapering babies wasn’t for the faint hearted.
Design improvements over the years made disposable diapers more effective, but I couldn’t bring myself to use them. Because of that movie.
And how truly disposable are disposable diapers? Would that hopefully fictitious family choose to live in a dump full of dirty diapers? No…..
I eventually caved in 1995 when my last baby developed an allergic reaction to any detergent I washed her newly, handmade by myself prefolded diapers with velcro closure in. The extra water I had to use to wash the same batch of diapers more than once didn’t make sense to me environmentally or mentally. Even though I sold my one and only Martin guitar to buy a Bernina sewing machine, just so I could be Earth Mom and sew those fancy diapers.
A few years before that I was in the clothing department at Walmart when I saw a sign attached to one of those metal support beam poles in the store advertising a contest sponsored by Woman’s Day Magazine. Underneath the sign was a pad of contest entries. I tore an entry off of the pad, took it home and in “Fifty words or less”, I mentioned things our family was doing to save the environment.
We recycled our newspapers. My husband, with permission, gathered discarded bicycle parts from the neighbors and put together two bicycles for our sons, who then spray painted them to look like new. I mentioned the cloth diapers, and maybe our house full of only used furniture.
I didn’t mention that we held yard sales frequently, allowing others to use clothing and toys and other things that we no longer needed. We owned a door and window shop and often had odds and ends that people could use.
One hectic day, I was down in our basement gathering things to sell at our upcoming yardsale. I’d forgotten that I’d left something cooking on the kitchen stove. All of a sudden, the smoke alarm went off, only because our kitchen was now full of smoke. I opened the front door to let the smoke escape, forgetting that our new puppy was in heat. (We’d just had her spayed, but she still carried that special scent that the neighbor dog caught a whiff of, and ran through the door, chasing our dog up the stairs and following her under our queen bed.)
I angrily grabbed a broom and with the handle, humanely coaxed that male dog out from under the bed, down the stairs, and out the front door, which I’d now closed.
Just then, the phone on the kitchen wall rang. I answered to, “Congratulations! You’re the winner of the Woman’s Day Environmental Contest and the the recipient of a $200 Gitano clothing gift card.”
So the next day, the kids and I went clothes shopping. At Walmart. All because I watched that film. $200 went a long way back in 1990.
It’s been a while since I’ve held a yard sale. Could be because we’ve furnished the two vacation rentals in our enormous home with our previously enjoyed furniture.
I confess to having bought and drunk water from a plastic bottle. I balance it out by wearing t-shirts made from recycled water bottles.
We long ago installed water-restrictive shower heads in all of our showers, I balance that out by enjoying a free flowing shower head while traveling and staying in hotels that haven’t bothered to do that yet.
I fill that blue bin every two weeks with recyclables, but was too lazy last night to wash off the aluminum foil I wrapped the tilapia and vegetables in, and threw it in the trash! But that box of foil has been in that kitchen drawer for years because I rarely use it.
I reuse ziploc bags so many times until they become holey with a capital H.
I wear a handmade apron while at home every day to keep my clothes clean, and so that I don’t have to wash them as often, thus saving electricity to run the washer and dryer, and thus saving water, and preventing my natural Seventh Generation detergent from entering our sewer system. I balance that out by buying more fabric than I could possibly ever use, even though I make a lot of apron gifts with it.
Now, don’t argue with me by saying that the contents of those blue bins on our curbside aren’t always recycled. The number of locations that are willing to handle our plastic, cardboard, paper and glass are dwindling, so the rumors may be occasionally true, but I’m willing to pay for the curbside service for the times that rumor isn’t true.
That doesn’t mean we can’t change our behavior (I have a hard time with double negatives and don’t know if I said that correctly.)
When your ziploc bags die after reusing them a zillionth time, try those trendy silicone zipper bags that will last forever. Until you yard sale them.
Before I leave, here’s a new song that my kids may very well have sung to me while they still lived at home. Poor things.
Come back next time and learn some facts about the Statue of Liberty. Until then, since we’re experiencing a severe drought, wear an apron to keep your clothes clean longer, take quick showers, and observe fire safety regulations. They’re stricter now.
Thanks for listening. I’m your host, Carolyn Murset.