THIS AND THAT: Looking for warmer weather and more

I woke up this morning before sunrise, as I do most mornings, walked into my kitchen, raised the window over my sink and heard the sound of birdsong. What a glorious sound!

The mockingbirds are back like clockwork, busily building their nests in the bushes in the front of my house. I always keep a close eye on them because they’ll entertain me all summer. Sometimes they perch on my gate taunting Banjo, the Cocker. His single duty is treeing the birds and he takes that job very seriously.

Last week’s temperatures were a tickle of spring. It can’t get here soon enough. In fact, I can’t wait to sweat! Give me spring and summer all day long. Winter isn’t my cup of tea anymore. I just hate being cold. Granted, this winter has been extremely mild and wet. But....

Which brings me to my next thought. Global warming. It’s all over the news. How fossil fuels are killing our environment. Now don’t get me wrong. I agree that we’ve done damage to the planet we’re living on. Americans are a gluttonous and lazy people. We spend too much, we use too much and then we discard too much. We’re cutting down all of our beautiful hardwoods and our roadsides, here, in Halifax County look like dumpsites. Shame on you!

Some of us remember the day, before plastic bottles, where we’d walk the roads in search of drink bottles to return to the stores. In turn we’d be rewarded with small sums of money, in which we’d then quickly spend on penny candies and more drinks out of a large ice box, filled with huge chunks of ice that had been purchased from the ice man. The coldest drinks in the world could be found in those old metal boxes.

And then we’d save those bottles to return and be reused.

I’m also old enough to remember the “milk man” delivering our milk in glass bottles. I loved the milk man and that galvanized, insulated box that sat on the porch. It was a treat greeting him at the door.

Back in the 50s and 60s, the emissions from our automobiles weren’t regulated like they are nowadays. The newer vehicles are cleaner than they’ve ever been. I drive a little four-cylinder Kia Soul. I love my little car and in all honesty, I’ve never driven a larger vehicle. It suits me and love it even more knowing it’s “paid in full.”

But even the larger cars are running cleaner fuels and are equipped with all the latest and greatest in air pollution control.

Back to glass bottles and aluminum cans. Would today’s generation be willing to gather and collect them in a return on their investment? And why can’t grocery stores go back to using those brown paper bags? Whose idea were those little plastic bags anyway? What a crock. Those things only hold four or five items, where the brown paper held a week’s worth of food items. Have you ever tried carrying the plastic bags on your wrist with 10 bags dangling? It cuts off your circulation because you’re too lazy to make two trips. I have and it hurts!

The other day I was talking to my grandchildren. One wanted a trip to Starbucks and one wanted a Tesla. I wanted to finish watching “Where The Crawdad’s Sing” on Netflix. It’s a great movie, by the way. It’s one of a thousand channels they have to watch as compared to the three channels I grew up with. These kids don’t have a clue.

My Kendall really believes that I only had radio as a child. She thinks I was a pioneer and lived off the land foraging for my food. I love those kids!

Well, I’ll never own an electric car. I’ll continue pumping that fossil fuel into my tank as long as I can, although the prices have increased drastically in the last few years and there’s really no place better than home.

I’m not so sure that the younger folks can solve the problem with their newfangled ideas. Maybe much of the answer lies in going backward, rather than forward. Eliminate the plastic and use more glass. Recycle, recycle, recycle! Our foremothers did. They grew gardens and canned our foods.

With that being said, I’ll make a motion for Halifax County to add more bins for our recycled stuff. The four currently located in South Boston ain’t gonna cut it!

Pick up your trash folks, and don’t be a litterbug

Oh, I scoffed at my parents too, when they’d give me some old-fashioned advice. And I laughed at my mother for saving her freezer bags and foil paper. But I grew up on hand-me-downs and pots of navy beans and biscuits, when mom was trying to stretch the groceries until payday. And how I looked forward to the rag bags of outgrown clothes from my cousin’s closet. In other words, recycling is nothing new. It was a way of life.

And then there was the year dad bought the wood stove and begun to cook my entire family. He’d see how big a fire he could build while the rest of us were melting upstairs in our bedrooms with our windows wide open in the dead of winter. Good times.