lifetplant

I grew up in Scotland. When I was a child I watched all the American show's; Starskey and Hutch, Charlies Angels, The Professionals, the streets of San Francisco, Chips.......and my favourite, Cagney and Lacey.

Okay, yes, they're all of the same genre but from memory the one thing that connected them in my child mind wasn't the police chases, guns, good guys, bad guys, smashed up police cars and shiny badges..............it was brown paper bags!

From the highest ranking police chief to the low down crim, at some point, everyone had to buy their staples. Be it a bomb going off at the supermarket, a kid getting kidnapped or just an off duty cop being called back to work in the middle of their supermarket shop, they were always carrying brown paper bags.

I remember thinking as a child how cool the Americans were with their brown paper bags, balancing them in their forearms as they tried to unlock the car.

I questioned brown paper bags often, they looked so sturdy and cool.........and American!

We couldn't have brown paper bags Mum explained, cause we didn't have a car like ALL Americans...........we needed plastic bags, with handles, allowing us to drag our groceries home with our stretched arms primate style.........I was so disillusioned, I wanted to be American.

Then.......recycling came, and, with recycling came,.........you guessed it, brown paper bags! As luck would have it, I also grew up, established a career, enough to earn money and buy a car, with a significant sized boot space to house those brown paper bags!!

Mostly everywhere I shop today has re-usable or eco friendly brown paper bags............one exception is my local IGA. A convenience store with alcohol a plenty and conveniently open until midnight. Their bags are plastic with handles.

I've two bins, one recycling where I house and repeat with a brown paper bag, the other, instead of buying supermarket refuse bags, I use the plastic bags with handles from my frequented convenience store.

This evening as norm doing the weekend cleaning I emptied my bins. As I attempted to replace, I realised there were no more plastic handles, no more plastic bags....................it seems with sober eyes, i've prioritised the convenience of that convenience store!

Verte

That must have been quite a collection of plastic bags with handles if you recently ran out of your stash

Great life story. Really appreciate this!

Gilmer

Where I live, plastic bags with handles, when they were first introduced, quickly became all the rage, almost replacing brown paper. Brown paper is still available, but you have to ask for it. It is good for making book covers for kids' textbooks! I have always recycled plastic bags for diaper disposal and scooping up dog poop.

I haven't yet switched to cloth bags--too scatterbrained to remember to ask for them--and then to remember to take them with me to the store! I tend to buy a week or two's worth at a time, anyway, so plastic is more convenient--they squish together and you can carry five bags in each hand.

lifetplant

Seems like there's been a reverse Gilmer, such a shame.

I'm not sure if I made the point of my post clear. While I support eco friendly and all it wasn't really the entirety of my post. The point was.........on noticing I had ran out of plastic bags, I therefore noted I had not been to the suppliers recently..............the bottle shop!!

Living now in Oz, alcohol is served in brown paper bags..........something never done at home and, if seen with a bottle in a brown paper bag......well, an automatic label is placed....alkie, tramp....etc.

Just goes to show how, depending on the where or the when, the this and the now, significance of such a simple thing as a brown paper bag can differ.

Just happy tonight to look into my cupboard and see no plastic handles and a surplus of brown paper bags. .............for now the metaphor may lie with only me, but it's a sober me, what else could I ask for?

Gilmer

That's cool, Life!

EternalNow

Thanks for the clarification.

LBrain

I was wondering where you were going with this. It made me think of camouflage. People in America use brown paper bags to conceal their bottles. I've seen many a time a guy on the street pulls an old wrinkled paper bag out of his pocket in the shape of a bottle. Unscrew the cap take a swig and put it back in the pocket.
It cracks me up. If it's hidden it isn't public drinking. So drink from a brown paper bag.