Recycling

My grandmother, who everyone knew as “Mom”, read the newspaper every day, or at night really, and then dropped the paper on the floor next to the bed where she read. Gradually the floor on her side of the bed became a mound of newsprint, a kind of hill to climb to bed. The floor on my side of the bed was generally open. I slept with her until I was about nine. 

I was sick a lot so I stayed in her room so she could look after me. Although my mother was in the next room, Mom was more my mother; she had effectively adopted both of us after my mother left my father when I was an infant.

The hill of newspaper did grow and migrate under the bed to my side and eventually built a small mound for me to climb to bed.

When the hills reached just the right height it was time to load the car with all the paper and drive it to the Saks Paper Mill. This wasn’t recycling for the sake of the environment—mind you—no one did that. Certainly there were paper-drives for various causes but we never participated. This was simple capitalism. They paid for the waste paper and making money wherever possible was what she did.

This was like the other ceremonies, a several hour process of sifting through the paper being careful to check for anything not newspaper that got lost in the piles. There was no telling what might turn up, one of my comic books maybe, or a letter from someone I didn’t know.

It was good to address these circumstances for other reasons. The small dogs we had figured the newspaper was as good a place as any to take care of dog business. Even with fairly regular cleanup, the smell became rather unpleasant. 

Our 1950 Plymouth Special Deluxe was huge in every way. The interior and trunk were enormous. We filled it to the roof and I wedged myself between the headliner and the top of the mound in the back seat for the ride to Saks Paper Mill. The trip to the mill was a series of circuitous back streets and dirt paths along the way that eventually became Studemont street between White Oak and Buffalo bayous. The paper mill was on Buffalo bayou right next to the Blue Ribbon Rice factory.

We’d drive up to and stop by a small guard shack onto a huge metal plate that was the surface of the scale to weigh the car and all with it on the way in. We drove up to the loading dock where we unloaded. This was the fun part for me. The loading dock man instructed me to simply throw the papers onto the dock floor, that being neat was not necessary and even a waste of effort. They had gasoline-powered vehicles that were designed to push the paper into the pits where the pressing and bailing took place. I scattered the paper freely onto the dock floor with great pleasure. Then I got to watch the pressing and bailing machinery turn the loose paper into tightly packed bundles for loading onto railway cars. 

When the car was free of its newspaper load, Mom drove out to the other side of the guard shack onto a different scale to be weighed again. Mom handed them the weigh-in ticket so the cashier could calculate the difference from the weigh-out value. That difference was the weight of the paper we delivered and they paid in cash per pound the reward for the effort. 

Mom drove the route back home. Usually we would stop at the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) just to see what the dogs for adoption looked like. Our current yard dog came from there before I was old enough to remember. We never adopted another dog, but Mom for whatever reason liked to investigate the options. We took our dogs there for their vaccinations as they offered the service much cheaper than a regular vet.

I still remember the smell of the place, especially the impound area where the dogs and cats were caged up, waiting for new homes. It was a strong, pungent smell.

Once we were back home, it was time for a cleaning ceremony in Mom’s bedroom. It was a rare opportunity to bring out the vacuum cleaner and suck up the dirt that had built up since the last trip to the paper mill. Once done, it was time to empty the vacuum. The requirement was to sift through the dirt to be sure nothing of value had been picked up.

I never knew how much we got from the paper mill. It paid for some groceries, or gasoline, or maybe even went toward a toy for me.