"Mama Went Green Before 'Going Green' Was Cool"

Nowadays, everybody is, "going green." Like a lot of other things that humans do, the whole trendy, fad-driven, obsession with "green" this and "green" that, has become in some ways a badge of one's being cool and hip. In essence, it is little more than a politically correct mask camouflaging a radically-driven, "environmentalist" mindset.

Folks who, "go green," seem to pride themselves on buying recycled stuff (some of the "stuff" out there that has already been used once, this fat boy does NOT want to use a second time). They also prefer to  patronize businesses and products who claim that they too have "gone green," and they refuse to embrace things like styro-foam fast food containers, plastic Walmart bags, light bulbs that really do give sufficient light to a room, and household chemicals of yesteryear such as chlordane (even though it is the ONLY chemical that really does "kill back" pesky insects and termites). Just one more reason to overturn at the ballot box the bane of over-reaching governmental dominance - like the so-called, "EPA."

In reality, the only "green" the environmentalist buzzards are truly concerned about is the growing transfer of the "green" from your pockets and mine to their own. The planet, the atmosphere, and all things related could just as well go to torment on a fast train as far as they are concerned. The "green" craze is all about money - pure and simple!

Long before the trendy, politically correct types hi-jacked the "green" world and took the rest of us hostage in it, Mama was already there. To borrow the hook from country icon, Barbara Mandrell, Mama was green before "green" was cool. But, Mama's version of "green" was anything but cool. Especially to a young man who had a lot on his budding, excitement-hungry, teenage plate.

Mama went "green" every school year with our clothes. She would either recycle last year's school clothes, or take us down to the local Salvation Army Store and buy us the "green" used clothing off the racks. In the late 1960's and early 1970's, and especially in high school social circles all over the city of Atlanta, styles like the patented Izod Alligator were all you needed to make the right fashion statement, and to be cool and "in style." Folks would unapologetically wear "puke green" shirts, sweaters, and even pants (ask this writer how he knows) as long as that little embroidered reptile was clearly visible.

When parents, and especially one's mother, have "gone green," it is NOT likely that Izod Alligators are part of the wardrobe agenda for her offspring. That little alligator did not live down at the Salvation Army Store, nor in the clothes that Mama sewed and made for us during the times that she REALLY went "green."

Mama also went "green" every Spring and Summer.

Just about every March, Mama's normally sweet and docile demeanor morphed into being something far more frightening than anything Stephen King ever conceived.

Mama's warm weather "green" crusade involved intense Spring cleaning, and continual Summertime maintenance. Things like scrubbing the bathroom tile with a toothbrush, mowing grass with a push mower or sling blade (John-Deere-riding-lawnmower-"Green" didn't live at our house), trimming shrubs, picking up dead limbs, planting flowers, cleaning out gutters, washing out trash cans, sweeping the driveway (the only "blowers" were the gasps of air you inhaled and exhaled while helping Mama "go green"), and just about anything else that meant a veritable chain-gang-like sentence of house and yard work.

As the months of Mama's environmentalist hysteria rolled along, the "green" tornado moved indoors. Her children were subjected to a seemingly endless flurry of chores which included, cleaning out closets, painting the walls of "your room" to cover up the girls' phone numbers you had scribbled there during the school year, airing out mattresses and throw rugs, taking down and washing every curtain in the house, rearranging furniture, and "deep cleaning" the stove, all the kitchen cabinets, and the refrigerator.

The "deep cleaning" concept was all but lost on this writer. Cleaning is cleaning, period. But, a Mama-gone-green "knew" deep cleaning. And, she took seriously her mission of ensuring that her children, however begrudgingly, knew it too. If Mama was "going green," she was obviously determined not to go there by herself.

Part of Mama's yearly voyage into the land of "green" included helping us kids get the "green" off our teeth, bodies, and hair. Mama would inspect our ears, our skin and scalp (for scabies, lice and bed bugs, mostly), the mouth and the teeth (for sores and cavities), and even underarms and between toes.

At least a part of what she was searching for were signs of the "relaxed" standard of personal hygiene often evidenced in young, Southern males. Just like the story of the young boy who went to summer youth camp during the "Dog Days" of August. One day, a camp counselor happened to walk through one of the bathhouses and found this boy standing in the shower area, vigorously scrubbing the cinder block walls with an unused bar of soap. When the counselor asked the reason for this behavior, the boy matter-of-factly responded that if he didn't scrub off the soap's brand logo indented in the side of the bar, his mother would know that he hadn't showered during his two-week stay at camp. Never mind that there were other "environmental" signs (i.e., intense "boy" B.O.) that would be a dead giveaway of his mindless rouse.

One other facet of Mama's being a forerunner of the contemporary "green" movement occurred without warning during this writer's upbringing. Long before there was a James Dobson with his "Dare To Discipline" mantra, and long before there were so-called mental/medical conditions like ADD, ADHD, ODD, and the "wonder" drug known as Ritalin, and long before there were street gangs and rampant juvenile delinquency in this writer's beloved home town, there was Mama.

The memory is vividly keen with images of her rushing out to the shrubs and trees, talking passionately under her breath as she went, and walking with the gait of a fireman hurrying to put out a raging inferno.

When Mama went "green" in this way, her children usually looked for a place to hide.

When she returned from this "green" pilgrimage, in her hand was a sizable portion of the environment - a "green" limb from either a small tree or a trusty shrub. Pulling the limb off at its base with an almost effortless, Schwarzenegger-like strength, Mama stripped the limb of its "green" foliage. As she headed back to the house, she would boisterously call out all three names of the offending child/children. This was designed to alert all other neighborhood children that, as Bill Cosby once said, the, "beatings were about to begin."

"Going green" for Mama in this way meant, without fail, that the offending child's legs would soon "go red" from the whelps inflicted during her parentally "green" tirade.    

Just another in a long list of environmentally-based lessons learned during the short years of having Mama as our beloved teacher.

In the end, Mama went "green" one last time. On that day, we carried her to the beloved, Northwest Alabama, coal-mining, community where she grew up. We carefully laid her to rest beneath the beautiful green grass of that hallowed old country cemetery where, as a boy, this writer often played among the tombstones and graves of family who were buried there.

It was early May when we took Mama's body home. The grass, the flowers, and and the trees were blooming everywhere. And, one would hope that Mama, in her new body and in her new home, was, and still is to this day, finding everything beautiful, alive with eternal freshness, and forever "green" - just like The Good Book says.

Mama, thank you for teaching us how to live, how to treat other people, how to love God, how to take care of the routine things of this life that must be done, and how to remember you with such love and fondness in our hearts. You "went green," just like so many other things you did, before the rest of us knew how cool all those things really were.

We love you, Mama, and we miss you here...

"Well I'll Be John Brown..."

- David Decker
  January 29, 2011