Their long, middle-parted hair tied back with leather thongs, a mother and her preschool daughter stare transfixed into a stew pot full of melting wax, watching a purple Crayola crayon dissolve to a thundercloud that gradually colors the whole steaming potful a rich magenta.
The mother dries her hands on her embroidered jeans, takes a deep breath and pours the wax into half a dozen emptied and washed half-gallon wine jugs that already contain hardened layers of Crayola crimson and Crayola orange. Mother and daughter watch the purple layer settle, knowing it'll have to dry a few days before they can add the blue and the green layers.
In a few weeks, right before Christmas, the mother reminds her toddler-hippie they'll have the best time of all: taking the jugs out onto the patio and breaking the glass with a hammer, freeing from their molds perfect, many-layered, gorgeous candles.
THIS IS A FEMALE BONDING SCENE from the early '70s, which is when the late '60s happened in Baltimore; and I didn't remember it until the early '90s, when a desultory spring-cleaning of the dank back cellar unearthed Aunt Maude's candle. Actually it was a candle my family and I gave Aunt Maude for Christmas -- Christmas, 1971. That was the year everybody unlucky enough to be our near and dear got a humongous handmade, dripped-into-an-Almaden-jug, melted-crayon-colored candle instead of a crass store-bought present. When Aunt Maude died a few years back, I inherited the things on top of Aunt Maude's kitchen cabinets. The handmade candle was one of those things.
Well, no wonder. There was only one skinny wick for about 18 pounds of wax, so the thing put itself out -- drowned its own wick -- as soon as the flame got going. For years the barely burned remnants of just such a homemade candle gathered dust and additional grease atop our own kitchen cabinets. Cellars over the age of 20 everywhere in the United States must hold a couple of those candles. They were one of my generation's old-fashioned solutions to the problem of used glass jugs.
Today, a spring day in 1991, it's the daughter of the above vignette -- wearing her immaculate jeans like a miniature J. Crew model -- who has taught her mother the Now approach to these jugs. They get collected in paper bags labeled Green Glass and Brown Glass and carted in the hatchback to the nearest recycling center -- in our case, at the corner of Joppa and La Salle roads in Towson. (In Towson, curbside recycling is still just a dream.)
"I can't believe you aren't already into it," was the way she shamed me into getting back into recycling. She, the female half of a married pair recently described by a family friend as "the most conservative couple in Charles Village," has been into it ever since she and her husband moved into a house of their own. Could it be that the linguistic kinship of "conservative" and "conservation" has actually started to mean something again?
I, on the other hand, couldn't believe I'd ever get into it again. I remembered all too well the full-time nature of recycling, back in the '70s. I remembered getting turned away from recycling dumps 15 miles away from our home because they were inexplicably closed that day, or, far worse, because I'd accidentally failed to comply with a regulation, like not steaming off every single scrap of every single label. Being cited for Inadequate Can Crushing was what finally made me abandon the whole recycling aspect of my life. I feel certain that '70s-style recycling was the beginning of the end of my first marriage.
Listening to my young mentor describe her system of lined-up paper bags -- one each for tin, aluminum, newspapers, non-newspaper paper, white, brown and green glass ("Wine bottles that look white are really green, in case you didn't know"), mentally trying to locate such a system in my tiny and already overstuffed kitchen, I could see a second marriage headed for the dump.
Nevertheless, that afternoon I bought two oversized, bright blue outdoor trash cans -- one for newspapers, one for bottles and cans. It took close to a month for both to fill to the brim. During that month, I noticed something magical: Our curbside trash dwindled from four cans each collection day to one or two cans once a week. But the Saturday of Reckoning was bound to roll around.
My first 1990's trip to the recycling center: I cringed at the thought. Experience told me it would be a bum trip, not unlike trying to register a used vehicle at the Motor Vehicle Administration. I'd wait in long lines and when it was finally my turn somebody grim-faced would tell me I'd done one little thing wrong and send me away to start all over again a week later. That's how recycling was in the bad old days.
So you can imagine my joyous surprise when smiling orange-vested flagwomen swooped my car -- rattling and rustling its heavy load of newly separated bottles, cans and paper -- into a big, orderly lot aswarm with smiling men, women and children who appeared to be having no trouble at all getting their motley assortments of recyclables accepted by the Powers. And the Powers were smiling too. Mostly, I found out, the Powers are volunteers from a variety of community associations, clubs, recreation groups and religious organizations, but the few who actually oversee several big county dumpsters are paid county employees. Paid, and still smiling.
Timidly, tentatively, still fully prepared for rejection, I handed a dumpster-man my first paper bag of newspapers.
"Thank you very much," he beamed.
"You're welcome."
The incredible thing was that I myself was welcome, and so were my cans! Suddenly I noticed that the sun was shining and the air was full of spring blossoms (recycled trash doesn't stink), and I was surrounded by a virtual carnival of good will and well-being. People clutched Talbot's, Macy's and Woolrich bags full of bottles against sweat shirts stenciled Yale, Wellesley, Oberlin or Support Our Troops; people holding Giant and Super Fresh bags of newspaper against T-shirts imploring Save the Whales, Save the Wolves, Love Your Mother[Earth]; people cradling Super Saver and Hecht's bags of cans against the logos of every rock band or radio station on the air. ("I Gave Blood for 98 Rock" was my personal favorite.)
Many young women had dressed for the occasion in swirling skirts of Indian gauze. There were hats: hats with floppy brims and slogan buttons and the occasional cabbage-rose. One black-haired beauty arrived in a Honda that was bumper-stickered "Goddess Bless." Her beautiful baby, strapped properly into a rear-seat baby carrier, clung to a plastic spring-water bottle as large as the baby. From every corner of the lot, in fact, tiny children proudly staggered toward the dumpsters under the weight of a 2-liter bottle or a six-pack of empty cans.
The whole crowd seemed just like the people I'd marched and sung with in the late '60s and early '70s. In several instances they actually were those people. I ran into a couple of college buddies I hadn't seen since we all grew up and retired our love beads. But I also recognized a county councilwoman, an Episcopal rector and -- yes -- a lady from the MVA. Smiling.
"How'd it go, Mom?"
My daughter sounded slightly worried on the phone later that afternoon, recognizing that she was the one who had talked me into recycling my recycling ambitions.
"Haven't had so much fun since I stopped being a hippie!" I answered.
"Oh, Mom, you never stopped."
Judging by Towson Recycling 1991, neither did a lot of us. We just changed our clothes (a little) and somehow got the Powers to come over to our side, lighting one funky candle of good intent to stave off the ecological dark.