We didn't have the "green thing" back in our day....(a most enjoyable read!)

[Mariana]

25. Around where I live, there are some ponds with fences and signs

warning people to stay away because they're STILL so toxic that swimming in them or eating fish out of them is dangerous.

I also remember seeing the scuz in the air over the cities, and the nasty yellow-brown stuff coming out of the smokestacks. I remember the nauseating foul stench from the local paper mill, and that the waste from it was discharged directly into the bay.

Those returnable bottles? A whole bunch of people just tossed them out of their cars, because there sure were always plenty to be found on the side of the road, among the rest of the garbage that people just threw on the ground wherever they happened to be.

To this day my father pours used motor oil, old paint, and solvents and such out onto the ground - in the vacant lot next door, of course. He won't be talked out of it, because he's always done that way.

Lots of folks just don't like young people and will take any opportunity to put them down, even if they have to make shit up to do it.