Retirement home CC Young crochet group Happy Hookers spends the last decade giving plastic bags a second life

One, two, three, Happy Hookers!”

For their 10-year anniversary in March, the older women at the retirement home CC Young shouted the name of their group in lieu of saying cheese while getting their picture taken. And yes, Happy Hookers may sound salacious at first, especially for those who have never heard of it before, or picked up a crochet hook. But the concept is actually quite wholesome.

Wrapped around these women’s crochet hooks is “plarn” (plastic yarn) made from plastic bags. Together, they make sleeping bag mats, which can provide some cushion and insulation, to people who are homeless.

“This is a good thing we’re doing is using this trash that would be in our landfills or in our trees or wherever,” Happy Hookers member Gloria Little says. She joined the group, which was founded by the daughter of a CC Young resident, because she cares about recycling and knew how to crochet.

On an interpersonal level, the activity has brought the women (most of whom are residents at CC Young) together.

“I’ve been here 10 years in November,” member Joan Jackson says. “It just set me off here, made me feel like I found my place here.”

To make plarn, the bags are cut up and tied together in small knots, and when enough is made, it can be crocheted into the 6-feet by 3-feet mats. It takes about 600 bags and nearly 60-70 hours to make one mat, according to a CC Young press release. Over the years, the mats have been distributed to Austin Street Center, Cathedral of Hope, Catholic Charities, Oak Lawn United Methodist Church, Salvation Army, The Bridge Homeless Recovery Center and Wesley-Rankin Community Center.

Jackson even recalled a time that her great-grandson saw one of the mats being used in public.

“When he was about 6 or 7, his mother was driving down Central Expressway,” she says. “They turned under Central Expressway on Walnut Hill, I believe it was. There was a homeless guy. He had a cart from the grocery store, and there was all his stuff in it, and a mat was up on top. And (the great-grandson) said, ‘Stop, stop, stop — Mom, there’s a man with Gram’s mat.’ So we knew. And then I had seen at a bus stop a man had one around him. So it just makes you feel so good that there’s something we did.”

Once finished, the mats can turn out to be quite colorful, depending on the kind of plastic bags used. During the anniversary celebration, a few of the mats were displayed like artwork, and one member remarked that the Happy Hookers are adept at identifying which store the bags came from in any given piece.

As anyone who uses the plastic bags at the grocery store can guess, plarn is not in short supply. Back when Toys “R” Us was still firmly in business (though it has been trying to come back), Happy Hooker member Marilyn Hamilton hit the jackpot when she approached the staff to ask them to save bags for her.

“There was a box under the counter where she had written, ‘Bags for lady,’” Hamilton laughs. “Of course, they just throw those bags away at customer service, so they would stash them in that box for me. I would go in every six weeks or so, and she would very happily show me.”

Then, when the toy store closed, Hamilton scored two shopping carts full of bags. She said the experience emboldened her to approach more stores for plastic bags, like Dollar General, Academy Sports + Outdoors and Hobby Lobby.

And that’s before counting community donations, which Little described as “overwhelming.”

“We appreciate them, except that lady who straightens them out,” Little says. “She’s really funny. She gets so angry when they’re all crushed up like that, but if they bring them kind of halfway straight, she’s happy to smooth them out.”

At this point, Hamilton says the group doesn’t need donations as they already have limited storage space.

Little continued crocheting a mat during the anniversary party. Her work looked to be about the size of a rolled up yoga mat with stripes of white and brown plarn. She said she had been working on it for about a month, both at the Happy Hookers meetups and during her free time at home.

“It’s very soothing, and I like that,” Little says.

CC Young residents and Point Members (who are nonresidents 55 years and older) are welcome to join the Happy Hookers, according to the press release. The group, which typically is attended by 11-15 people, meets up on Mondays.

Happy Hookers isn’t the only group Jackson participates in. She also enjoys chair volleyball and sign language classes. But Happy Hookers is the activity she looks forward to the most.

“It starts my week off well,” Jackson says. “We all usually start telling something funny, and then we back up each other when you have a loss in the family. It’s just a great group of women that take care of each other.”