How my Uncle Jim spearheaded the green revolution

You can say a lot of things about us Vrabels -- that we are a swarthy, Cubs-loving bunch, that our name in Slovak means "Little Bird" but we tell people it means "Ferocious Warriors With Swords Of Fire And Rage" and that most of us can make a pretty mean halupki, although we find most people who say that last thing do so immediately before making up a reason to leave the room.

But one thing that has always been true of the Vrabel family is that we are a frugal lot, and by "frugal" I mean "some of us steal those little jelly packets from diners instead of purchasing more substantial jars at the grocery mart." This has been the case ever since the Vrabel who first came to America, my great-grandfather Andras, did so by securing passage on a steamer bound from Hamburg on Priceline, which required him to be at the dock at like 4 in the morning and made stops in Oslo, Dublin, and Sao Paulo before getting to Ellis Island, but the deal was totally worth it, and parking's cheaper if you get there early anyway. (It is believed he also used lunch vouchers from an Entertainment Book.)

OK, that part is a joke, but this paragraph is not: When my grandfather died, we discovered among his astonishing amount of long-hoarded basement detritus boxes marked with things such as, "Scotch Tape Dispensers -- Working" and "Scotch Tape Dispensers -- Broken," which doesn't really make a lot of sense unless Grandpa was working on a Scotch tape dispenser-

fueled jet pack he didn't tell us about, which is entirely possible, as he was an ingenious kind of guy, despite hanging onto what appeared to be every single aluminum can he encountered throughout his 85 years. Between our extended family, there are probably about 900 buckets of rescued water-logged golf balls stashed in garages. And my cousin recently confessed that after five years of marriage, it still drives him completely bananas to see his wife employ a piece of aluminum foil only once. "I die a little each time," he says, before adding, "And don't even get me started on the Ziploc bags."

These aren't family secrets or anything: We used to kid about these sorts of things at Thanksgiving, generally while drinking beer someone purchased 12 years ago because it was on sale and never told anybody about until right then. But that was a great long time ago, back in happier times, when gas was two bucks a gallon and consumption was an accepted and encouraged part of life, when Vrabel family behavior could have been looked at as, dare I say it, cheap.

But now, with things looking financially bleak, the mortgage crisis ruining folks left and right, groceries getting more and more expensive and people having to decide between cereal and gas, we Vrabels can walk proud, because these things that we are used to doing, such as attempting to find continued uses for very old paper clips -- now is considered not "miserly and sort of weird," but "green, clever and forward-thinking."

I will use, as a case in point, my uncles Jim and Don, twins who routinely made a habit of appearing at the family Christmas Eve gatherings carrying over their shoulders plastic bags full of tennis shoes; they would have each looked quite a bit like Santa, except that I'm pretty sure Santa's plan was not to sell the shoes to the family at a discount for profit. At Christmastime. (It sounds weird, but everything got back to normal once we all sat down to our traditional Christmas Eve 10-footer from Subway).

Now, see, you're thinking, well that's just odd, interrupting your family's holiday festivities with a footwear-sale interlude. But now, with everyone all into conservation, reducing, reusing and recycling, that's not a strange development at all, it's just smart, conservationist living! Which, if my calculations are correct, puts our family at the forefront of the green revolution, since we've been doing this since about 1906. Al Gore, if you're reading -- and I know you are, you can't hide from me -- you can just pass your Bandwagon Ticket to Uncle Jim, a few seats down. While you're there, get yourself a nice pair of shoes.