June 1, 2016 Article

The Old Coot - Cardboard ain’t what it used to be!

By Merlin Lessler

What’s with today’s cardboard? Even an old coot like me can tear a box to shreds for the recycle bin in a few seconds. The cardboard is just plain wimpy. When boxes were made with “real” cardboard they were so strong I had to hire a contractor to come to the house to tear up the boxes for the trash. Not anymore.

When I was a kid (Here I go, back down memory lane to the good old days. What do you expect? I’m an old coot.) cardboard was essential to our toy armory. It was so strong, so durable, you could make a fort out of a box that a washing machine or a refrigerator came packed in, cut out doors and windows, paint a picket fence with daisies peeking through the slats around the outside and it would last for months and months. Easily stored under the bed when other toys or games moved to center stage.

We used it to slide down hills in winter. It held up through several snowstorms. And, if the snow was especially sticky, a cardboard box could beat a toboggan to the bottom of a hill. It got a real workout at Halloween. The neighborhood was filled with kids in cardboard box costumes, disguised as: a pack of cigarettes on two legs, a radio or TV, the torso of Frankenstein, a lion in a cage. The options were limited only by a kid’s imagination.

Even adults prized these “real” cardboard discards. You would find them covering the garage floor to soak up oil from a dripping oil pan, in the attic storing mementos and family heirlooms. Fathers often used them to make the body on a soapbox racer for a young, future Indy driver. (Back when “box” in soapbox racer meant what its name implied.) An older teen in our neighborhood crafted a canoe out of a refrigerator box and proved it was sea worthy in the swamp at the bottom of the hill.  

It was that old cardboard, what I call real cardboard, that flapped against our spokes to make our bicycles sound like a motorcycle. Sometimes it came from a cut up box, sometimes from a baseball card. I often had Mickey Mantle flapping against my spokes. If I’d only known how much those cards would be worth one day. They were cheap back then – 3 cards and a flat piece of bubble gum for 5 cents. No, they sure don’t make cardboard like they used to.

Comments?  to mlessler7@gmail.com, Complaints to donotcare@cootmail.com.