I remember this. I remember my Dad going to Pittsburgh for work conferences and coming home with his white dress shirts gray and stinking from the air.
I remember days in summer when Mom wouldn't let us play outside because the air was so bad.
I remember going to visit the grands in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and being shown the Grand River.... brown and filthy, stinking, with barrels and chunks floating in it as it made its way to Lake Michigan. I remember thinking that my mom must have been making it up that it used to be a nice river where they had picnics next to it.
I remember visiting Lake Michigan's beach near Holland. There were dead fish as far as your eye could see. It stunk. There was a one-legged man (Vietnam War vet?) trying to walk through the sand on crutches, and to avoid stepping on the reeking dead fish.
I remember only seeing wild geese once in my entire first 20 years -- and they were flying up so high the only way to know them was by their honking; I remember my rapture at hearing their calls. I remember that I never saw a hawk, eagle, owl, or any other raptor till I was well into adulthood.
I remember Times Beach; I got my first alcohol drink there before it was bulldozed. It was contaminated with dioxin.
I remember all these things. The act that created the EPA was passed when I was 17 years old. It was signed into law by a Republican president. In that year I was lucky enough to meet Dr. Barry Commoner and shake his hand, at Missouri Botanical Garden. I remember that there was a time when all Americans wanted to change things together. Together we cleaned the air, the water, the Earth.
I want those days again.