1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE: Waste, Waste, and more Waste

Getting rid of things we didn't need presented a problem in Purdon. We had no city services; we didn't even know what "city services" were. Our family and all the other families got rid of everything ourselves and provided our own disposal tasks.

We didn't need police because people either just killed each other, got over it, or the family intervened; in extreme cases, they took retaliation into their own hands, usually with an unpleasant outcome. Decent people knew the sheriff and deputy sheriffs for Navarro County, and they rushed out to Purdon on the highway in their squad cars when things got out of hand, which was rare.

We didn't seem to have many fires because people didn't throw their cigarette butts out car windows or just any old where, like on the street. They put them in ashtrays in the cars and homes and emptied the stale contents every few days. Events like when my brother and Phil threw the matches in the dry grass were infrequent, and since so many women were home in the daytime, these aberrant occurrences were often spotted early enough to be handled by the swift application of water from a garden hose.

Water quality was excellent for most people, coming either from underground wells or large metal cisterns that caught the pure rainwater that fell in the spring and fall assuring cool, refreshing water for the searing summers.

Of course no garbage services were offered either, so folks had to figure out what to do with the leftovers. We rarely used paperplates or any paper products besides toilet paper, which went into the septic tank and paper towels (which for some unknown reason we called towel paper). Canned vegetables provided the most problematic accrual of waste.

Everyone in town had a "burn barrel", a 50 gallon barrel that sat at the back of the yard. There we burned the "towel paper" and labels off vegetable, fruit, and soup cans. The whole can was tossed in the barrel, and though it wouldn't burn, developed a lovely ashy coating that if touched adhered to one's skin, creating a charcoal colored smear that required lots of scrubbing with soap and water to remove.

For some reason, the fire in that barrel and its sooty contents, was an endless source of fascination for most kids, and we six were no exception, though the older three kids had outgrown playing with the fire in the barrel by the time we younger three got started with it.

"Don't play with the fire in the barrel," my dad would warn, eyeing the flames licking the top of the barrel rim, as he left for work.

"Ok," the three of us said in unison, sticks in hand.

As soon as we heard his truck slow to cross the railroad tracks 15 yards from the house, we hurried to the barrel to see what we could make happen.

"Stick your stick in and see if you can set it on fire," I told Susan.

"Ok," she said unusually agreeably. In seconds, the flames lit the dry branch, and she made neat, tight circles over the barrel with her flaming torch. We watched, hypnotized.

"I'll light mine next," I suggested. She didn't say anything, so I took that as affirmative. It didn't take long for the stick to ignite. The summer heat had sucked it bone dry. I had snapped it easily off the lower part of the large oak next to the house. The others had picked theirs up off the ground.

I held my stick tentatively over the barrel with one hand, bending my knees to reach a stick for Jan that lay between us. "Here," I said with uncharacteristic kindness. "Want to set your stick on fire? We're doing a fire dance with our hands. See?"

"Um, yeah," she said, looking to Susan for reassurance. But Susan was too enamored of her twirling fiery stick and didn't give her the go ahead.
Jan never trusted me as much as she did our older sisters, and rightly so.

Jan's head was just even with the top of the barrel so she couldn't see the flames inside. I reached over and helpfully slid her stick toward the fire.

"Ouch," she said, accidentally touching the side of the rusted barrel, "that's hot," and she dropped her stick into the barrel. Her protest seemed to shake Susan out of a trance, and she suddenly let go of her own stick and watched it fall into the flames.

I held defiantly onto my burning branch even as Susan nodded toward me to let it go. When I didn't drop it, she reminded me with a voice filled with recrimination.

"Now let it go. We shouldn't be doing this anyway. Daddy told us not to, and Mother will be disappointed if she sees what we've done. Remember when you caught the rug and your hair on fire? You don't need to be playing with this. You could get hurt."

Reluctantly, I released my tight grip on the stick and let the rest of it fall into the barrel, the flames licking happily at its dry bark, turning it immediately into tiny glowing red embers.

Inside, we busied ourselves with our dolls while Mother mopped all the linoleum floors. I went into the living room to plink on the old upright and managed to irritate everyone but Mother who said it sounded lovely, and that she thought I had some talent.

Behind the piano, I noticed a small white item, so I retrieved a coat hanger, and stuck it back there, scraping it against the white form, my face pressed against the wall, until finally I pulled it to me. It was one of Daddy's cigarettes. I looked around furtively and picked it up. Mother had already moved to another room with her mop and bucket of water.

"Daaahling," I said, putting it to my lips. "What shall we do today? Everyone wants to swim, so let's go to the pool in the backyard. I can hardly wait to see what your swimsuit looks like. Is it red? You know I love red." I took an imaginary puff, blowing out with great emphasis, then holding the thin tube out between two fingers, my hand posed dramatically near my face, visualizing my conversation partner and her admiring gaze.

"I love red too, daaaahling" a voice said. It was Susan. "What is that in your hand?............Oh my gosh, put that down! How do you find these things?"

I dropped it from my draped hand immediately, reality speeding quickly into the room.

"Sorry," I said. "Don't tell Mother?"

She pursed her lips, considering. "Oh, okay. If you throw it away right now."

I did. And she didn't.

The tobacco tasted rank. Living for a while behind the piano probably didn't improve its taste. Smoking looked so sophisticated on television and the movies, and we loved "smoking" our candy cigarettes, which looked something like the real thing and which we bought in little authentic-looking cigarette packages. But after that brief taste of the true thing, smoking was never a real temptation again. The stale taste stayed in my memory bank, not something I wanted to repeat.

After supper that evening, Daddy said "I think I'll empty that barrel. It's getting too full. It should be cooled off by now. You didn't burn anything in it this afternoon, did you?"

"No," Mother said. "Let me put on some old clothes and I'll help you."

"Can we go?" Jan asked.

"Sure honey," but you need to stay in the front of the truck. It's really dirty there."

"I don't want to go," Susan said. "I'm going to stay here with Neila and study."

"Hey, Daddy," I said, remembering something I needed to tell him. "Do you remember the family we told you moved to town last week? The Reeds?"

"Yes, I remember you mentioning them, but I haven't seen them around town or met them yet."

"Yeah, they said they hadn't met you either. But I told them what you looked like."

"Oh, you did, did you?" My father was overweight, had always worn thick glasses, and was balding quickly, but he was a fastidious dresser and attentive to his appearance. My mother, on the other hand, was slim and pretty, but didn't spend much time "fixing up", preferring to spend her time doing things with the kids.

"Well what did you tell them I looked like?" he said, smiling, hoping for a good reference.

"I just told them you were short, fat, bald and wore glasses," I said sincerely.

When I saw the crestfallen look on his face as he said with uncharacteristic meekness "Oh," I added helpfully, "But I told them you were real friendly and nice and that you didn't smell bad when you sweated."

"Lib," he called. "Let's go."

The trip to the large ditch where everyone in Purdon and the surrounding area dumped their burn barrels was quick. It was only a mile or so down a gravel road. Most of the stuff dumped there was burned cans since everyone fed old food to their pets or wildlife, burned excess paper, and had appliances that were as old as their kids. You rarely saw an appliance in there. People repaired them or traded them in .

There was one swing set lying on its side, and Jan was standing up in the seat of the truck looking out the wide back window. Her eyes lit up when she saw it and she started pointing. I had crawled up in the back bed of the truck to get a better view of the action.

Mother and Daddy were up in the bed of the truck, wrestling the barrel to the back where they had let the tailgate down. Daddy got down on the ground at the edge of the tailgate and took hold of the bottom of the rusted barrel. He ran his hand across the bottom of the barrel. "No holes," he reported. "We can keep burning in it another six months or so."

Mother held the rim at the top of the barrel and together they eased it down to the ground. Then they "walked" and rolled it as far into the edge of the thousands of burned cans as they could.

"On three," my father said, counting slowly. When he said three, they tilted the barrel, emptying its black sooty cans into the heap of thousands of cans already deposited there.

"That looks ugly," I observed.

"Soil erosion control," Daddy said without a smile.

"I agree, it looks ugly. There's no place else to put it though," Mother answered me. "Everybody puts their burned cans in the same place so it only makes one messy place. Someone threw their swingset in there. They should have broken it down and used the pipe to make something else like your Daddy does," she said.

Jan was still focused on the spindly legs of the swingset sticking up like an upended praying mantis and was pointing and jumping up and down on the seat, like she had spotted something in the Sears toy department that we should buy.

"No!" I shouted, shaking my head forcefully.

"It's better than ours!" she yelled, pressing her lips against the thick glass, distorting them grotesquely.

"No! It's not!" I yelled louder. "It's an old one, and anyway we can't get it! There are probably snakes in under those cans!"

Mother and Daddy didn't say anything, but when I turned to see where they were, they were walking toward the cab of the truck, both looking at the ground, kicking stray cans toward the ditch. Mother was laughing; Daddy looked chagrined.

"Maybe we won't bring the girls next time," he said so low I thought he was talking to himself.



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