The Bear's Den: "When GREEN Wasn´t Cool"
David Walks-As-Bear
August 22, 2011
Recently, I had to take a load of old carpet and a tired old easy chair to the dump. I backed up to a precipice and off-loaded into a big dumpster below. I never even saw the dump proper, which was just beyond a large wall of concrete. They don´t let you drive into it anymore. In the old days, though, that was the norm. You would drive a winding two-track through the woods until you hit a huge landfill area with seagulls overhead and miles of mounds of rusty treasure as far as the eye could see. Yes´um, and you could roam it all to your hearts content. Best of all, though, was that you were usually all alone – save for maybe one or two others – at this locale, because, well, not many folks were as GREEN as you.
Today, though, that´s changed. The GREEN movement is suddenly big. It´s all about the new recycling businesses and hey, that´s great. But it´s always made out to sound so new and innovative. Well… it ain´t. Like many things, it has just gained an acceptance in society now – that´s all. See, the thing is, people in this country have been recycling for hundreds of years. American Indians recycled any and everything that was reusable. It´s has always been as much a part of our culture as living and breathing. The Creator didn´t put anything here to be wasted, and we know it. While Indians recycled because it was logical and expected by the Great Good Spirit, others built whole businesses on recycling because there was money to be made. Wreckers demolished homes and large buildings after stripping them of all materials that they could later re-sell. At sea, this process was called "Salvaging" or "Wrecking"; ships were stripped of cargos and even deck planks, eh. But anyway you look at it, GREEN is not a new thought, and it was as GREEN back then… as it is today.
Geeze, remember the old TV series "Sanford & Son"? Fred Sanford and his boy were on TV every week, from 1972 to 1977, making a living out of recycling long before this notion got socially popular today. The only difference was that back then, people – of all colors – held up their nose at this kind of occupation. They thought it was a tad disgusting. This show was a first for this content. But this TV series about two black men was also the first–ever to show black people talking derogatorily about white people. That was a social first. The lead actor was a comedienne named Redd Foxx. He played the cantankerous old man; he often had run-ins with white people, uppity neighbors and his sister-in-law. This usually caused him to slap his chest with a feigned heart attack, call to his deceased wife and stagger about. He´d yell, "This is the big one. Hear that, Elizabeth? I´m coming to ya, honey!" Well, anyway, he and his son, Lamont, played by Demond Wilson, had a family business of collecting and re-selling junk. In other words, they were "GREEN". So, not only was this TV show the first to display black people talking openly, and derogatorily about whites, but it was also one of the first to show a real-life recycling business, too.
So see – those guys on the History Channel´s "American Pickers" aren´t all that novel. Heck, my brother´s father-in-law was a "junker" and he made a decent living at it, right up until he couldn´t physically work anymore. Old Bud would drive around neighborhoods collecting thrown-away stuff at the curb, take it home and refurbish it to sell at flea markets. I remember back in the early 1960´s, when I got to go to the dump with him a few times. Man, going to the dump was like going to an amusement park for a kid. Once there, you could pick through discarded stuff for hours and find the coolest things. Oh yeah, and in case you´re wondering, none of the junk resembled Jimmy Hoffa, either. And, before you begin thinking that I was crawling through mounds and mounds of smelly, nasty plastic garbage bags – I wasn´t – nope.
Plastic garbage bags didn´t even exist back in those days. Heck – plastic anything was rare back then. The smelly garbage that went to the dump in those times was contained in large brown paper bags from folks´ homes. Yep, and it went to a different spot in the dump than say, a thrown-away busted bicycle, old car fender, or broken porch swing – see? The dump guy had signs up showing you where to dump what. And, back then, it was socially acceptable for folks to respect simple rules and they actually followed them. They separated garbage by decomposition rates back then. Most people, except those that lived in big cities, also had burning barrels in their back yards. They burned all of their throw-away paper and cardboard refuse. And if they didn´t want to pay a garbage pick-up bill for their tin cans and glass, they buried them in big dump holes also in their back yards. GREEN wasn´t cool in those days, except for a few things like newspaper, steel and iron that were recycled. Otherwise, and for the most part, recycling trash didn´t exist.
Anymore, the municipal rules won´t let you go out and meander the dumps. That´s fine by me, and pretty wise, too. They no longer separate it according to decomposition either, so it would, indeed, be a slimy, smelly place. Yes´sir, and not only that, but these days you´d probably stumble across some serial killer´s discard, to boot. Like being suddenly GREEN, serial killing seems to be another thing that´s become more socially acceptable nowadays. Yet, just the same, dump diving was GREEN when GREEN… wasn´t cool.
David Walks-As-Bear is an Inter-Tribal Elder and Kispoko Shawnee Indian. He works as a private game warden and detective and is a novelist and syndicated newspaper columnist living in Northwest Michigan. Contact him at his home paper The White Lake Beacon: 231-894-5356 or visit his website at: www.Walks-As-Bear.com Hear David´s brief "Traditional Elder´s Reflections" Mon-Sat, after the 10:00AM (EST) news on the radio. Go to: www.hometownradio.us and click WEEH-FM.
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