When I was growing up, my family lived in a big old house that sat on a hillside, well back from the street. Our graveled driveway was cut into the eastern slope of our property. On one side of the narrow drive a steep bank covered with ivy and other aggressive flora rose toward the house, and on the other side the hill continued to tumble, unvexed, toward our neighbor below. It was like some preposterous mountain trail, capped by a tricky turn that led to a parking area at the kitchen door where, incidentally, the household garbage cans were kept.
There were two of them, as I recall, 55-gallon drums made of steel that my father had requisitioned from the mill where he worked. The thought of hauling them, filled with stinky refuse, to the street would have been laughable to us. Anyway, it would have been impossible. On collection days, a judicious driver would park the garbage truck at the foot of our driveway where two men would step off and ascend the grade on foot, toting a cotton basket between them. Do you know what I mean when I say “cotton basket?” It was a gigantic basket, woven by hand from indestructible strips of white oak. Seriously. If you could even find an artisan today capable of producing such a basket, it probably would cost you something in the neighborhood of $1,000. Together, they would lift our heavy garbage cans, dump the contents into their basket and trudge back down the hill where they would reverse the process, hoisting the basket and dumping our garbage into the back of their truck. That was the way it was done; those men performed a similar task at every house in town. However, I am certain our house enjoyed a singular notoriety within their fraternity.
15 responses to “Garbage Out, Garbage In”
I did a fast search and found someone who creates them and teaches others how to make them:
http://whiteoakbaskets.com/index.htm
Amazingly, they don’t offer them for sale online, but they do sell them at craft fairs.
As for the equinox, I found this to be interesting:
https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/equinox-not-equal.html
Who knew that we don’t get 12 hours exactly of day and night today? Not I!
I immediately thought of Stephen Zeh, http://www.stephenzeh.com, but he works in ash these days. I think he was working in white oak the first time I saw his baskets, but that was a lot of years ago. And yes, they cost in the range of $1,000, if memory serves.
We put our non-garbage stuff (I guess today we would call them recyclables) into several metal bushel baskets. Mostly, it was clinkers from our coal furnace. On pick-up day, two gentlemen would come into our basement and hand these baskets through the window to other gentlemen outside who would empty them into their truck. How could the city afford to pay 3 or 4 men to spend 5 to 10 minutes at each house? Today, one gentleman, or lady, barely stops the truck while automated lifters grab the container and empty it.
I wasn’t able to comment yesterday, but we had some weird weather. In the late afternoon, it was about 43 degrees, but snowing. However, the ground was so warm that the snow melted as soon as it landed, so it might as well have been raining. This is my first winter in Snow Country, and I’d never seen that before.
We did not have garbage pick-up where I grew up. We lived in the country, but not that far in the country, so I was one of the few kids in school that did not have that. My dad would pick up an old steel drum and we would burn paper etc in it. It would rust and sometimes we just burned the refuge on the spot where the drum was and kept an eye on it so that it did not burn all of the grass around it.
We had about 6 metal garbage cans for tin cans and such. When they filled up, my Dad would attach a trailer to the car and we would take it to the local dump. Dumps got to be harder to find after I left home 40 years ago.
We also had a garbage pail for food as with a septic tank there was no garbage disposal. We would dump in the very back of our property as it would stink. My dad loved apples and when our neighbor quit bringing in cattle in the 40 acres around us, birds would pick up the seeds and within about 10-15 years or so there were apple trees of different varieties growing all over the acreage. When the land was sold for development, huge expensive homes were built and the streets were named Crab Apple, Apple Jack and Orchard Grove Drive. I kidded my Dad that he was the 20th century Johnny Appleseed. Ironically Johnny was buried in Ford Wayne, not far from where I grew up.
An egg, or more likely 2 touching, on the gravel at the Baltimore peregrine skyscraper site. Last of the previous session’s posts features a UK peregrine webcam. Also, scroll down from the site below to see the Chesapeake osprey webcam. An adult is back at its artificial nest platform. BSU Biol. Dept. is looking for funds to construct an osprey site at the S. end of campus, shore of Lake B.
https://www.explore.org/livecams/birds/peregrine-falcon-chesapeake-conservancy
Peace,
Just 1 egg. Don’t know what misled me; nothing seems amiss.
On an unrelated note, Burns didn’t write “plans” but rather “schemes”, perfectly good Brit. usage. Rings a bell / ’40s-’50s; Brit. “ground nut scheme” that went awry. Not sure what mouse is pictured in the Burns site below, nor if the one pictured is likely in a Scottish field. May report back.
http://www.robertburns.org.uk/Assets/Poems_Songs/toamouse.htm
Peace,
In my Baby Boom neighborhood, we all had fifty-gallon drums, too. However, we used them to burn most of our trash. That, of course, was back in the days when we could also burn leaves in the gutter.
Anyone else have those memories?
Mostly of the smell of other people’s burning leaves. Peace,
In town we had a 32gal garbage can – truck came down the street and 2 men, one each side
would dump can in back of truck. If can was not at curb – no pick up.
Country was 55 cal drum, burned every thing.
In NYC there was an incinerator – a chute door on each floor. When needed the Super set the
pile alight. 2-3 times a week?
Ashes were different – they were put in an Ash Can, it was a heavy riveted container that was
collected by a truck with a boom for lifting the container and ashes.
But that was 70+ YA – then things went to oil. Then no longer had to get the ashes hauled away.
Or the coal dumped in the hole in the sidewalk. Special scissor truck to get height to get chute across
side walk.
Coal Truck
https://www.google.com/search?q=scissor+coal+truck&client=firefox-b-1&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=6smpddWJW7zMiM%253A%252CWA8fz3wZKz0R5M%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kS-_7jbbLAx0jCyQZR9Ef3dv60X6A&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiPh4eApJLhAhWCsJ4KHfsqA0UQ9QEwAHoECAkQBA#imgrc=6smpddWJW7zMiM:
I no longer have to get my ashes hauled, either. Peace,
Tundra swans & buffleheads, maybe others.
https://explore.org/livecams/birds/mississippi-river-flyway-cam
Peace,
At my grandparent’s house in Tuscaloosa, their street was shaped like a U. This made for an odd garbage pickup because the guys riding the truck would go get the cans alongside the house on the outside of the U. But for the ones on the inside there was an alley that ran between the back of the houses. Those folks kept their garbage cans back there and the truck would drive up it to empty them. Over time they switched to getting everybody’s from the street. And when the carts like Jimmy shows came along, we had to put them at the curb where the guys on the truck would attach them to the truck to be dumped. Afterwards, they would just drop the carts wherever they happened to be, in the street or whatever. Yet the city told the customers that they couldn’t leave the carts in the street to be emptied.