Polyethylene Packaging - a Dark Times Journal entry

I was in the fourth grade when our family moved from El Paso, Texas to Albuquerque, New Mexico. We moved because I could not breathe the air there. I want to say they cracked petroleum there. But what did I know beyond the sky was sometimes yellow and I could not breathe. Mom was pregnant with Debbie, and Gary and I rode in the backseat separated by a round tank full of Dad's tropical fish.

Dad had a job with Sealright, Inc which made paper milk cartons. Sealright was a polyethylene packing subsidiary of Phillips 66. The petroleum company. I was rather proud of myself for learning to say that, and to not laugh when adults would stare at me not knowing what to ask about that.

Albuquerque smelled better. Then. Before all the freeways were built and the shape of the valley trapped the exhaust down near the ground in the winter months. We lived in the foothills. I could breathe. I learned that if I could see the air I could not. Still it was better than El Paso though I missed our trips to Juarez for Sunday dinner out. And the waiters who could fill our water glasses from three feet above them without spilling a drop. You could still drink the water then. There was still water in the Rio Grande which we walked over on those Sundays. It still looked like water.

Simpler times. The milkman put the glass contained milk in the box on our porch. Little did I know that the company Dad worked for was trying to replace those glass bottles with paper covered with polyethylene film. He did a good job at that and was promoted to a management position and the family moved to Denver while I moved into Hokona Dorm on the University of New Mexico. President Kennedy had been assassinated and there were more important things to think about than polyethylene. I just had to remember where my folks lived so I could go home for summer and Christmas. I was a military brat. I was mobile. Glass milk bottles were going away. Mom could still buy Coke, her addiction of choice, in glass returnable bottles, but that wouldn't be for long because plastic was the new miracle.

It wasn't until Dad was vice president of that polyethylene packaging subsidiary of Phillips 66 that I found out polyethylene is a waste product of cracking petroleum. Dad worked for a company which made it impossible for me to breathe in El Paso. And by extension guilty for all the plastic non-recyclable waste in our oceans. He was dead by then. In the end he couldn't breathe because he had a form of Rheumatoid arthritis which attacks the lungs. My sister and I were tested to see if we had the same gene. Thankfully no. I just know I cannot live comfortably in cities.

And I miss glass bottles.