Gone But Not Forgotten

Just recently I started using an inherited wind-up wrist watch. A watch with operational energy created by winding a spring. No batteries, just wind it to generate it's renewable energy. Not all of past innovations are worth abandoning.
Plastics from the Japanese Tsunami are now washing up on American shores. Independent of this, is a vast lake of plastic floating in the ocean. Once in America's recent past, glass bottles were used as renewable containers that not only safely transported milk and other liquids, but created jobs collecting the bottles and sterilizing them. Glass bottles that didn't leach chemicals into the liquids they contained.
At one time gas stations were called service stations. You never had to leave your car because service station attendants had jobs pumping your gas and checking your oil. Gas was under fifty cents a gallon then.
The cash register and the job of the cashier have given way to the self service scanner. Do your food purchases seem any cheaper?
Banks and bankers lent money based on the borrowers ability to repay the loan, not to get rich on banking fees.
Politicians ran for office to make life more tolerable for Americans. To help them survive. Now they run for the illusion of power and the lust for money.