My neighbor, Leslie Friedman, just found this interesting Newton artifact from 1942 in her basement.
Crazy Divers: Men be like...
drivers man be like
My neighbor, Leslie Friedman, just found this interesting Newton artifact from 1942 in her basement.
Crazy Divers: Men be like...
drivers man be like
They collected ash?
I’m curious what the ash mostly came from in 1942 Newton – wood? coal?
Greg, you must be too young to remember the term “ash can”. It was a sturdy trash barrel made from heavier metal parts. We had a coal bin in our cellar.
I still have a lot of coal in my cellar. If anybody wants it, they’re welcome to come over and carry it away.
Also included in Leslie’s cache of local artifacts was a guide for a walking tour called “Discover Historic Newton Upper Falls” that was produced I think in the 1980’s. It included some details about our house’s original owners (1835) that we didn’t know.
Another interesting detail: the last line
“Don’t mix garbage with your trash”. I know in Boston back then they had a separate collection for garbage. The house I grew up in (and all the others) had a garbage can that fit into a hole in the ground with a flip’able cover. They picked up garbage in a different truck and I think it got composted and used for fertilizer.
Looks like Newton may have had something similar back then.
The ash came almost entirely from coal. One of my jobs as a kid was going down into dark cellars to remove barrels of coal ashes from several of our neighbors who were slow to convert to oil or gas. Many also continued to have ice boxes long after most other homes had switched to electric refrigerators. I think the coal and ice companies stopped delivering sometime in the late 50’s.
Ash– I think it’s high in lye and phosphorus–both useful for soap and other products. It’s still in the City ordinances as one of the treatments for ice on your sidewalks.
Jerry, yes, Newton had that type of garbage collection. There are still some houses in Newton with the garbage barrels in the ground typically near the back door (some are used as planters now). As a kid, I thought the guy who had the job of collecting the garbage had the worst job in the city. He carried a barrel on his shoulder and would collect the smelly stuff (especially in July and August) for multiple houses. He walked from backyard to backyard (even through the winter snow). The truck driver would leap frog him and let him empty his barrel at the end of each block.
Andreae – ash, especially coal ash, on the ice on the sidewalks? That had to be one fine mess. You definitely wouldn’t want a white carpet in your hallway.
@Patrick: Can you explain that leap frog part again? Not quite sure what that would have looked like.
My mother tells me about sifting the ashes from the coal stove to retrieve bits that could be burned again.
And we have one of those outdoor holes with the flipable metal top for the garbage and our house was built in the 1950s.
My family moved to Newton Centre in 1958 when I was a toddler. We had one of those flipable top garbage cans in the ground, and the garbage man collected from it regularly. I can’t remember when that stopped, but it was definitely part of my childhood memories.
Greg, garbage collection was a two man operation, the truck driver and the walker. The walker would leave the truck at one end of a city block and walk through the backyards collecting at each house. The lucky guy in the truck only needed to advance the truck to the other end of the block before the walker met him there to empty his barrel and repeat the process on the next block. Maybe the two guys alternated spots; I always assumed one guy had seniority so the other guy walked. It reminded me of the kid’s game, leap frogging. Maybe you are too young to remember that game; I envy your youth.
Ha. I remember what leap frog is, I was just trying to picture two garbage men (nowadays sanitation workers) jumping over each other as the emptied these old trash tubes.