showcrop

Well-known Member
As I was opening a sleeve of Ritz crackers it made me think of how when I was kid they were packed in wax paper and opened a lot more easily. I would say that Saran wrap came out around 1963. before that sandwiches were all wrapped in waxed paper. There were no plastic bottles. All glass until the first canned soda came out around 1960. Medicines were all in glass bottles. There were no blister packs, everything was in little cardboard boxes. Car interiors were either metal or fabric or wood. What a revolution in packaging and manufacturing when plastics came along. Almost overnight a family of four went from a half a bushel of trash a week to two, and now landfills cover a lot of our planet's surface.
 
I can remember when products like peanut butter came in a glass container that when it was empty you had a regular glass.

When people did a lot of baking they would by sacks of flour and when the sack was empty you had a pillow case. The sacks had patterns printed on them.

Oh the good ole days!
 
I have always disliked Saran Wrap plastic for sandwiches or cookies, cake, etc. We always used wax paper at home when I was a
kid and my wife has continued to the practice to this very day (like today specifically). Not sure if I dreamed it up but I
always thought the Saran Wrap made things soggy (probably not true) but there is nothing like opening a properly wrapped
sandwich with wax paper .... great stuff. And there is a correct and incorrect way of wrapping a sandwich in wax paper, but
I'll leave that for another time.
 
I remember my Mother wrapping my sandwiches in wax paper from empty cereal boxes. She would select flour sacks by the pattern on the cloth because she was saving enough sacks to make a dress out of them, or maybe a blouse or something.
 
That brings back a few memories. Sandwiches in wax paper. My cousin Eddie knocking my Beverly Hillbilly's thermos off my school desk and breaking the glass liner. Those were the days.
 
Saran actually came out in the late 40s. The company I contract for makes several types of film, including most of the IV and colostomy bags in use today. THe division I work for has a 100% post consumer recycle rate on plastics and metals, 80% on wood and paper.
 
(quoted from post at 07:12:03 04/23/17) Saran actually came out in the late 40s. The company I contract for makes several types of film, including most of the IV and colostomy bags in use today. THe division I work for has a 100% post consumer recycle rate on plastics and metals, 80% on wood and paper.

John, I am sure that you are aware that recycling is on very hard times in recent years, especially plastic, due to the low cost of petroleum. What is your company and division? They need to publicize.
 
I contract for the R&D division of Sealed Air. I actually made a mistake in saying "post" consumer, they do very little of that, however the company that does the repelletizing of SA scrap plastic does use post consumer plastics in the process. Point was though, this division, and the company as a whole is very big on recycling. The government put a damper on what can be used woth this material, like it cant be used for food grade or medical grade materials, but for shrink and stretch films it cant be. It takes some digging, but you can search the Sealed Air webpage and find the recycling policies and what they do.

Another company that occupies some of our warehouses is Tecnor Apex. The make water hoses, hose pipes to the southerners. Everything, and I mean everything on that hose is 100% recycled material. Even the hose ends are recycled material, brass or aluminum. They actaully buy scrap material and do all of the processing on site, except the ends which are actually made at another divison in I think it is NC, I really cant recall what the manager told me about those.
 
Kind of along the line of "do you remember when"-I'm pretty sure at one time layer chow and calf starter came in patterned cloth
sacks that wound up making colorful shirts for little grade school guys to wear, together with their jeans and overalls which were
bought long to be grown into and had to have the legs rolled up in big cuffs. Anybody else recall this or am I confused?
 
I went through school in the 50's through the mid 60's and mom always wrapped our sandwiches with Saran Wrap.
 
No, you're not confused. I wore many feed sack shirts when I was a kid, made by an aunt who was an excellent seamstress. I used to go to the feed store with my parents when we were buying dairy ration and chicken feed and I'd pick out the sack I liked best. I specifically remember a purple, green and gold paisley pattern that I just had to have. Loved that shirt.

As for turning up the cuffs, I'm sure you're right about buying pants too long and growing in to them, but for a long time cuffs were also the style. The boys at my school cuffed their jeans from first grade to senior. I've watched a lot of John Wayne's old pre-war westerns, and was amused to see that he had about a five-inch cuff on his jeans, as did the other cowboys.
 
(quoted from post at 09:07:39 04/23/17.................. jeans and overalls.....................had to have the legs rolled up in big cuffs. Anybody else recall this or am I confused?


Years agoI know that the oldest western wear store (Lorig's) in Colo. Springs used to have just one inseam length on all their jeans but had a bunch of different waist sizes. You would go in and find the waist size that fit, the clerk would measure for your inseam and then take them to the back room where a seamstress would cut and re-hem them to your length. The clerk told me that this way, the inventory that they had to keep was cut by over 50%! I am pretty sure that they quit doing it this way 20 or 30 years ago. Too bad! :roll:
 
Speaking of peanut butter. I just brought back a load from Little Rock yesterday. About 22,000 22.8? oz jars. I
wonder how many fewer jars a load would be if the jars were glass instead of plastic. A while back I had a load of
16.8 oz jars. 37,000 more or less. A jar a day for a hundred years and a couple left over. I had not thought of that
possibly being the reason to go to plastic.
 

One of the stories from the lumber yard I worked at. One old guy who'd been there since Noah was building duck boats always brought 2 ham sandwiches to work in waxed paper. One of the "kids", who was probably in his 40's, ragged on him about the waxed paper being old fashioned. Old timer says he's been using same piece of paper for over a year. "Kid" says BS. Old guy challenges him and brings in a new piece next day, had the "kid" mark it somehow. Old guy used the same waxed paper for way over a year just to prove his point. I wasn't there to see it, but it was about what I'd expect from some of those old timers down there.
 
My grandma also had some square glass containers with lids that she called "refrigerator dishes"... back in the days before plastic Tupperware (and today's disposable Gladware containters).

I still have a small amber glass refrigerator dish of hers. :)
I use it occasionally - but often it's just on display on my old Hoosier style cupboard.
 
When I was 13 years old I would leave Grandma's kitchen at 5:30 am, with two pints of hot Postum in ball jars wrapped with many layers of newspaper. (thermos). And about 4 large oatmeal cookies in wax paper. And a cheese sandwich with mayo also in wp. I'd have my double 16 ga, my Lab and 12-13 shells. I was expected to have 5 mallards and 5 roosters. by 11:00 am.. The lake was a mile and a half as a duck flies but usually I bagged my limit as they came off the lake to feed in the picked part of the cornfield. I'd lay down with an old OD Army blankets over me. Often, when they were landing at well before sunrise, one might land right on top of me. Gypsy, my lab jumped up and caught a hen mallard once.I took it back to the farm and we made a pen for it. It lived for about 5 years and raised perhaps 80 ducklings with a tame husband ( Traveler) we arranged for her. . We called her Gypsy Moth.
I think she was the only thing that died on that farm that we didn't eat. I buried her beneath a cottonwood tree.. Seven years later, I would bury Gypsy beside her.
 

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