Please Critique

Riding on the bus and trax train for my 90-mile roundtrip daily commute has given me time to reflect on my ultra-green mother, who seemingly came by it naturally! She was a baby during World War II, thereby not experiencing the Great Depression. Were there enough vestiges of hard times as she grew up to make her the way she is? I’m not sure, because I certainly don’t know anybody quite like her. I can only hope to be half as ecologically friendly as my mother.
As long as I can remember, my parents have had two cars, but they never drove like they had two cars! I distinctly remember my mom consolidating errands, saying, “I’m only going out one time today.” During my childhood, gas was a precious commodity to her. If we were driving downhill, she would shut the engine off, put the vehicle into neutral, and let gravity (physics?) do its trick. She valued every last drop of fuel, even to the point of running out of gas. I remember waiting with several of my brothers and sisters in our vehicle while she walked to the nearest gas station, probably with the youngest of the kids in tow.
We learned very young how to make use of public transportation. One family story claims I actually fell asleep on the lap of a stranger on one of the buses in Salt Lake City in the early 70s.
My mom also conserved energy in our home. I don’t remember ever having a clothes dryer. Hanging clothes out on the clothesline in our basement or backyard was as big a part of my childhood as playing with neighborhood friends. Several winter mornings I would put on not-quite-dry icy jeans, figuring my body heat would dry them out eventually.
My mom kept our thermostat at 58 degrees in the winter, day and night. Our kitchen and family room were the only rooms that had open heater vents, and they were blocked off from the rest of the house with a slatted wooden door and a long, heavy canvas curtain. I remember huddling over the heater vent with a baby blanket every time the heat turn on in order to capture what warmth I could. If any of us complained about the cold, we were promptly given a chore to do, which my mom assured would quickly warm us up. We learned not to complain! Despite one of my brother’s friends declaring that our house was the coldest and darkest one he knew, there was a lot of happiness in that house. Instead of frequently shuttling us to our friends’ houses, we learned how to be each other’s best friends.
We could laugh together when my mom would collect the toilet paper off the trees that we had been T.P.eed with, put it in paper sack, and place it in the bathroom for us to use!
My mom and dad became the owners of my beloved brother’s Cadillac when he passed away of cancer. My mother values this car for many reasons—mainly because it belonged to the baby of our family—and because she knows that although this was a good vehicle for my brother, is it a real gas guzzler. She takes it out on rare occasions, preferring instead to use a combination of bicycle, bus and train.
My dream someday is to be able to show my future children this old relic of a car, which will probably still be running due to its low mileage and say, “This car belonged to your uncle, and then to your grandmother.” It ran on something called gasoline, which you can now only get at gas stations few and far between.” I’ll then point out all the people on bikes, electric buses and trains, and tell them to breathe the fresh air, and to thank people like my mom who paved the way for a greener earth.