The First Earth Day, 1970, by Anonymous

From MemoryArchive

Who: Anonymous
What: The First Earth Day
When: 1970
Where: My Little Elementary School in the Midwest

I remember it pretty well. There was a creek than ran from a pond about a block from my elementary school. I walked over a bridge (if you can call it that) everyday on my way to school. In the spring and summer we used to play in the creek. There were crawdads, small fish, tadpoles and even turtles. When it rained, the creek would flood and rush by like a river (or so it seemed to us). In the winter, the creek would of course freeze and we would test and eventually walk on the ice. Someone always fell in. The creek was cool.

There was junk in it, tires, bottles, even the occasional grocery cart, but we didn't think of it as "pollution." I was just stuff people had thrown away. I remember once we collected all this refuse together with a bunch of rocks and mud and tried to dam the creek. We got really muddy and dirty, but failed utterly to stop the stream. I remember we found quite a bit of junk, though.

So I was a bit surprised when my second (or was it third?) grade teacher said we were all going to tramp down to the creek to clean it up. I really didn't get the point of it, to be honest. The creek was for playing in, not for cleaning up. And besides, I didn't consider it dirty. It was a CREEK. But she told us that it was our duty somehow to get down there and clear all the junk out. I had no objection to this, as it was an excuse to get out of the classroom and screw around with my buddies. And that's what we did. We all went down there--single file, if I recall--and began to collect the stuff. It was pretty fun, and we made it a game to see who could find the best crap. By the end of it we had an enormous pile. I believe the city then came and pick it up, but I don't remember. I remember being upset that we had to go back to class, though.

It was only years latter that I realized we had participated in the first Earth Day. Back then, we just weren't aware of it. If we were, we forgot. It was just a day we got to go to the creek and play during school. That is what made it memorable.