Burn your own trash

Matt McCone · Status: Offline

Burn your own trash

Paul Penna · Status: Offline

Putting plastic in the burnable trash was always a big no-no around our place. First, because before Mother got her new O'Keefe and Merritt range in 1955, we had an old gas stove with a trash burner and she didn't want the kitchen stunk up. Later, post-outdoor-burning-ban, we used the fireplace. So we only burned nice, clean trash. But I get your point!

-- Edited by Paul Penna at 19:01, 2007-04-11

Paul · Status: Offline

I remember when people used to burn garbage in Larkspur back in the mid 60's.
Most people did it on Sundays and it was very unpleasent , if not downright depressing
to me. The air was brown and stunk like burning plastic, it really had a strong
negative effect on me. GOOD RIDDANCE, just like those smelly , extremly noisy old
trains.

Paul Penna · Status: Offline

In these pollution-conscious days, it may seem remarkable that a civic entity would sanction the outdoor burning of trash by its citizenry, yet that's how they did things in them there days. In this case, those days were 1959, and here's a permit issued by the Larkspur Fire Department for us to use an incinerator in our back yard at 9 Arch Street:

My mother was the one who happened to go down to the firehouse and get this one, though usually it was my father, who was also in charge of the actual burning. Here, from the same year, is our incinerator, though not in use in this shot:

Later, he replaced the oil drum with a more substantial affair constructed of cement blocks, which we used until they banned outdoor burning. Those fruit trees you see blooming generated a lot of clippings when he pruned them each year, and those he piled up in heap in our vacant lot and set it ablaze. The ashes from all those fires were added to the compost heaps, which you can make out to the left of the drum. One is nearly depleted from use in that year's spring plantings.

For those of you who've seen my references to the pretend "City of Penton" I turned our back yard into in the 50s, the incinerator is located, appropriately enough, on "Compost Road." The stairway at the lower left is "Garage Ave.," because, you see, it went up to the garage.

-- Edited by Paul Penna at 19:02, 2007-04-11