When you buy just about anything these days it comes in some form of wrapper to protect it in transit or from contamination. The former is to make sure the product arrives safe and sound while the latter is to make sure you don’t come down with typhus or some other feared disease found in books about Christopher Columbus.
This has led to a plague of plastic trash that is set to completely ruin not only our landfills but the oceans surrounding us. Even now, there are islands of plastic trash larger than the state of Texas swishing around out in the Pacific Ocean. In an attempt to eliminate such pollution the illustrious state of California has implemented a new law which outlaws the use of plastic straws.
Interestingly enough, the new paper straws come in a plastic sleeve as opposed to the plastic straws that came in a paper sleeve. This is called being “environmentally friendly” by those promoting such hogwash and they announce such new laws sipping on a plastic bottle of water after flying across the state in a pollution causing jet.
Since I am older than many of you, I can recall the days before sanitizers, wipeys and mothers obsessed with cleanliness. Then, kids shared an Orange Crush soda, got their candy from a jar at the local store, pills came in little cardboard boxes and groceries were actually “sacked” in brown paper bags which served a dual purpose for coloring paper or making scary masks once you got them home.
The advent of the plastic shopping bags alone has been remarkable without which I would not be able to comply with the pooper scooper laws requiring me to follow my dog Cooper around picking up his messes.
These are all added to our landfills on a daily basis and in foreign countries they simply dump it all in the most convenient waterway leading to the ocean because “out of sight out of mind” seems to be their go-to method of disposal.
Just recently Ol’ Dutch got to noticing that many kids these days are allergic to milk and peanut butter. Now, I am not an authority, but some leading scientist have wondered if lack of exposure to germs at an early age leads to such maladies. I don’t know.
I do know, however, that the same candy I got when I was growing up was from a jar that had snot boogers from the last kid to access it and must have exposed me to a plethora of germs which made me stronger, because it didn’t kill me. We also ate a lot of dirt too back in those days as no one thought it was particularly bad for a kid. If you can eat dirt you can most likely take on anything, I would think.
Just last week Miss Trixie and I were at the local market and got a box of bacon. This meat was packaged in a cardboard box of 10 pounds and there was no shrink wrap plastic wrapper in sight. Since the bulk bacon was only $2 a pound, Miss Trixie was willing to eschew the neatly vacuumed brands three times the price and go for the bulk. She is her mother’s daughter.
For me, any time I cut into a regular vacuumed-packed bacon package, I think if it is this difficult for me to get in, it must be doing a whale of a job protecting me from germs and spoilage.
Now, that’s modern thinking for you, right there. If you read about pioneers and mountain men, they carried bacon with them astraddle a saddle across the west without the use of plastic wrap. You see there are some things that I guess even germs cannot attack and bacon must be one of them.
Back here in this age, plastic is with us to stay I fear due to the cheap costs of said product and packaging will continue to frustrate our old hands as we age into the next decade. Which reminds me, I need to take out the trash in the plastic bag.

Kevin Kirkpatrick and his Yorkie, Cooper, fish, hunt, ATV or hike daily. His email is [email protected]. Additional news can be found at www.troutrepublic.com or on Twitter at TroutRepublic.