You’re going to learn quite a bit about the recycling campaigns born out of the 1960s and ‘70s in this issue of Discover Vintage America since Earth Day is in April. You likely learned about them in elementary or middle school – characters, slogans and PSAs designed to drive home the importance of reducing waste in the name of Mother Earth and her health. Hopefully, you’ve carried them with you into adulthood and passed on the wise lessons they trumpet to your own children and grandchildren.

Eco Club

I remember joining my middle school’s newly formed “Eco Club” in seventh grade. In Eco Club, we learned all about the importance of recycling, reducing waste, and reusing items that could find a second life as something else. Often, we’d pick up trash around the school grounds. Even though it seemed like a menial task, I was proud to do it. I was making a positive impact, however seemingly small.

But did you know that efforts to reduce waste and reuse everyday household items were concepts that existed long before that period in postwar America? Your own ancestors were conscious of the importance of conserving our resources, not just in the name of reducing waste, but in an effort to go easy on the pocketbook, too.

According to a 2020 article on History.com, in the 19th century, “People recycled far more than we do now,” says Susan Strasser, author of “Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash.” “If the elbows in a shirt wore out, you’d take the sleeves off, turn them inside out, and voila: new shirt. If a dress went out of style, you added new buttons or sent it back to the dressmaker to fashion a trendier frock. Event-ually, the fabric would be turned into a quilt or a rag rug or just a rag.”

Recycling modern concept

Recycling, however, is more of a modern concept; in fact, in the 19th century, it was nearly unheard of. Back then, Strasser notes, there existed “the ragman,” a worker who went from one house to another in a neighborhood and bought your scraps of used cloth that would later be made into paper.

Garbage pickup as we know it today was introduced in the later part of that century, and city employees separated the reusable waste from that which was unusable, instead sending it to a landfill. If you and your family lived on a farm, you were likely to see your mother save organic waste to feed to the barnyard animals.

As I write this, temperatures in the Kansas City metro area continue to hover below freezing, with traces of snow lingering like an unwelcome dinner guest who failed to bring a bottle of wine to your party.

Throughout the winter months, as snow and ice have pelted the Midwest, it’s been easy to reflect on all we’ve lost these past couple of years. But let’s not forget what our children have lost, too – chief among them, the joy that a snow day off from school would inevitably bring.

You know you remember the feeling well – those evenings in the dead of winter during your childhood when you discussed the next day’s weather forecast with your parents – them, with a sigh of quiet resignation, and you, in a voice heavy with unbridled glee and a dash of hope that maybe, enough snow would fall overnight to keep you home from school.

 The next morning, having barely slept at all due to your rising levels of excitement and anticipation, you threw open your curtains to marvel at the work Mother Nature had done while you lie in your bed. Beautiful snow, blanketing the ground, heavy, wet, glistening, and a gorgeous temporary road block on your path to education.

Oh please, oh please, oh please, you exhale, running downstairs to watch the local news, normally a boring part of your parents’ daily routine but today, your oracle of (hopefully) good fortune. Your mother is already in front of the TV, coffee mug in hand, and you join her, watching the crawl at the bottom of the screen as it lists off area school closures in alphabetical order.

And then you see it – your school!

You squeal with delight, shouting “YEEEESSSSS!” and pumping your small fists in the air. Then, it’s off to your landline phone to call your friends to make plans so your precious snow day isn’t wasted. Maybe you’ll build a snowman or go sledding. Maybe you’ll have a good-natured snowball fight.

Contact Corbin Crable at editor@discovervintage.com​

Welcome to the January 2022 issue of Discover Vintage America! In this issue, we’ll be covering collectibles for those of a certain age – namely, Generation X, which covers anyone born between 1965 and 1980. Of course, the list of collectibles is lengthy, and it includes video games, those toys that retain a special place in the hearts of Gen Xers like me.

Although video game consoles have been ubiquitous with youth for decades, I’m old enough to remember one of the earlier iterations – the original Nintendo Entertainment System.

By the time the NES was released in 1983 in Japan, video game consoles had saturated the market for a little more than a decade, with the first ones being set up in American homes in the early 1970s. The NES device was released into American test markets in the fall of 1985 and were immensely popular from the start, becoming nothing short of a status symbol for a generation of young players.

I can recall my parents giving me the NES Action Set in the late 1980s for my birthday. The set, which retailed for $150, included the console itself, two game controllers, a ‘zapper’ (a controller resembling a gun), and two games loaded into one cartridge – Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt.

I also remember hours of fun playing the game Gyromite, whose entire premise involved a mad scientist character attempting to disarm dynamite in his lab, placed there by his nemesis.

Among my friends and my younger brother’s friends, our house was the place to be. Between stints of playing outside for some much-needed fresh air and exercise, my brother and I hosted friends who would come over and stay for hours in a bid to save the princess in Super Mario Bros.

As I grew older, my interests moved away from video games; my brother, Evan, to this day, remains fiercely loyal to the original Nintendo – so much so, in fact, that on the eve of his wedding in Las Vegas, he and Aaron, his best friend since childhood, played Nintendo in his hotel room. On his last day as a single man, Evan had the entirety of the Las Vegas strip at his fingertips, and all he wanted to do was play Tecmo Bowl with his best friend. It was a touching memory. Though they now have families of their own, these two pals still find time to get together regularly to play their favorite video games from childhood.

Contact Corbin Crable at editor@discovervintage.com​