Putting poo and poo together...

millworkman'slinked site says: "Underground Cans have become very popular for pet waste."

I think it is an abandoned cistern access door and tube. It's cool. What is underneath it??

This post was edited by sasafras on Sat, Feb 7, 15 at 21:36

Pre garbage disposers these were in-ground garbage (not trash) cans that usually had a foot pedal opener. The garage collector would take the inner pail out and dump the garbage in a truck. Its a protection against animals.

Are you anywhere in the greater Boston area?

For a long time, Boston residents had to separate their waste into "garbage" or food waste and "trash" which was everything else.

Garbage went into underground trash cans that look pretty much like what Renovator8 shows. There was a separate can that could be lifted out. The garbage was collected by pig farmers in the area and used as pig food.

I've seen the in-ground cans located out by the street, by the kitchen door and in the back yard in various houses that still have them. (I think the separate collections stopped sometime in the 1950s?)

There was on-street collection of the trash.

Are you anywhere in the greater Boston area?

For a long time, Boston residents had to separate their waste into "garbage" or food waste and "trash" which was everything else.

Garbage went into underground trash cans that look pretty much like what Renovator8 shows. There was a separate can that could be lifted out. The garbage was collected by pig farmers in the area and used as pig food.

I've seen the in-ground cans located out by the street, by the kitchen door and in the back yard in various houses that still have them. (I think the separate collections stopped sometime in the 1950s?)

There was on-street collection of the trash.

Well I learn something new every day. I consider myself a garbage/recycling/composting aficionado and I've never seen one of these.

BTW, since dog poo was mentioned, the way to break it down without stink is not with lime, but high-carbon, low nitrogen organic matter like sawdust, straw, leaves, shredded paper etc. Basic compost principles. I have a composting outhouse at my rural property where we use sawdust. No odor at all. There is another product similar to this one called Doggy Doolie, a semi-sunken plastic composter for dog poo. Basically the worms and soil bacteria munch it up. When the hole is full you cover it up and move the thing. It does not use any organic matter addition like I described but I suppose since it's basically closed in there is not much smell.

Looks like the cover I had years ago for an in-ground garbage can. I removed the cover and filled the hole with dirt.

Yes, this was in-ground garbage in the 50's.. The narrow metal cylinder was removed by the garbage collectors weekly. They carried a long metal hook that attached to the metal loop on the top of the can and they pulled it out. It was about 4 feet long and they hauled it on their backs down the driveway to their truck. They dumped it and then walked back up the driveway and replaced it in the hole, and closed the lid. Oh the flies!!!! The lids were quite heavy. I do not remember my Mom or Dad opening it with their foot, or just pulling up the lid, but it was too heavy for us kids to lift the lid. Good thing!

Was just telling my wife about these. When I was a kid in East Providence RI we had one in the back yard, next to the out side fireplace, where we burned our trash. My mom would have me take the organic waste, like meat, bones, vegetable scraps out and dump it in the "garbage pail". The smell was horrible and the maggots that sometimes covered the inside was enough to make you gag. Once a week, a foul smelling low bed dump truck would come down the street. One man would go through the back yards and dump the garbage into his large can and he would take it to the street and empty it in the truck bed. The smell from the truck was the worst. We as kids would run when we'd see or smell the truck. A real boggy man to us. The smell usually preceded the truck. The poor collector was usually filthy dirty. Don't know what he was paid but I'd bet it was not enough.

Its a Majestic Underground Garbage system

Keeps the dogs out but what a poor execution if it was full of flies and maggots. I doubt pigs would even eat that after a few days. It would have been so much simpler and more effective to make it an in-ground composting setup just by leaving the bottom open. Although you'd have to move it when the hole got full.

We had one of those when I was a kid growing up in ct in the 50s. It was on the side of the garage. We had a long driveway, and I remember the men coming all the way up to take the filled trash can down to the street, and bringing the empty can back up. I don’t remember the guy who took the food waste very clearly, so I don’t know if it was a different guy from the regular trash.

Not only did we have one of these growing up, but we also had an in-ground "box" in the backyard where the milkman would leave our milk every couple of days.

We had a milk box on the back steps. On cold days the cream would be solidified and pushed straight up out of the bottle with the paper cap sitting on top.

saypoint,

Same experience as a kid in NYC in the 1940s - I also remember the frozen cream.

Thanks for the memories!

I have one by my back door! Have never opened it! Growing up in Western MA, the garbage men were a different crew from trash men. Yes to the memory of maggots! They were still collecting garbage when we moved to a nearby town in the early 60's. In the 50's I recall the big truck which would drive slowly through the neighborhood periodically with a man yelling "Rags! Rags!" Anybody else remember that?

We had a guy in a pickup truck who drove slowly up the street calling out “cash paid for rags!” I remember waking up to that call on Saturday mornings in the summer. We once sold him an old mattress.

saypoint-

I can match that and raise you one. We had a ragman, too, but he didn't have a pickup; ours had a horse-drawn cart which he would slowly drive through the alleys. This was about 1950 in a large, midwest city. My mother told us that, if we misbehaved, the ragman was going to take us away.

Simpler times, that’s for sure. You have to wonder, though, what the ragman’s life was like that he had to make a living buying and selling rags. I guess there are always people who struggle to keep it together.

saypoint- I was too young at the time to feel sorry for the guy, but, as I got older and occasionally thought about this odd, long-gone character, I had some respect for him and his determination.

SaltiDawg- Thanks for finally clearing up the mystery about Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance, but I wonder if anyone else knows what we're talking about.... ;-)

I guess the rag bale beats being interred in The Meadowlands of NJ.... about six yards in to the End Zone.

Bwahahahahah

I suspect a huge percentage of potentially usable discarded clothing ends up in the landfills now. There is an active rag industry though, fed by thrift stores and such. I know of a processor in St. Louis that takes in tons of stuff, sorts out the cotton (for use in high quality paper - remember 'rag bond'? They still make it. And a lot of the usable but not 'nice enough' clothing for the US market gets baled and sent to other countries. Ever wonder why that guy in a photo from Africa has an Adidas shirt? Probably came in bale of stuff from the US.

Yea that makes sense. I throw clothes that are not usable but otherwise take to the goodwill store. If I knew of a used rags deposit the garbage clothes could go to that instead. In the long run, the clothes fibers biodegrade. If you can focus on recycling plastics that goes a long way.

Except for the synthetic fibers which last a good long time.

Anyway I try to use unwearable old shirts, socks etc. as rags. If I accumulate too many I get a little more liberal about throwing them out after using rather than washing. Of course the ones with motor oil, paint etc. get tossed immediately.

Growing up in MA we still separated our garbage from our trash and used our underground garbage bin into the 1980’s. Was too young to remember if the garbage men took it out of the ground or if we did. Great pic!

I really enjoyed all the information this topic generated. It makes me wonder about other surprising innovations found in old/older houses.

WOW! Seeing this brings back old "childhood" memories. I think it's what we called "Garbage Buckets" ! We had one of the green ones "pictured above" in the post by "Renovaor8" -- I can also remember the "stinky" garbage truck coming once a week to empty it out. We also had a Bread Man (Wonder) and a Milk Man (Hood) who make deliveries to our home. FOND memories of growing up in Massachusetts.

my 74 yrs old and know exactly what this is,before garbage trucks coming around and picking up garbage and waste you had two things in your back yard (1) was a 55 gal drum(metal canlarge) it had hole punched in the sides of this large can) and when your paper goods couldn’t be used for something else you’d bring them outside and put them in the barrel and when it got half full you’d go out and burn the used product , (2)now when mom couldn’t find any more ways to use the scraps (food potatoes ,meat,grease from bacon etc, ( potato skins where never part of the group,mom would make potato chips lol)) being ltalian mom would take what ever was left over from lunch and dinner and make a breakfast adding egg’s ( better know in the ltalian family as a FRETARD) and what ever the dog wouldn’t eat went in that funny looking storage with a pedal on it,think about this No cell phones,no computers, no emergency room as we know it, Dr would come to your house,if you had a cold mom would take a flannel shit tear it up put it on the radiator rub Vick’s on your chest an put the warm flannel over your chest,tuck you in give u a kiss and repeat this until you got better and if u didn’t then you’d have a Dr visit,and you gave the Dr what ever your family could afford ( never much over a couple of dollars,of course when it was time to go to school( no matter the distance or weather ,rain or snowed) you got up with the smell of food cooking and you could hear the bacon popping and you dad sitting at the table and sat down eat whatever,got dressed and waited till some yelled your name out and walked to school with friends who lived on the same street,those days were left the best thoughts one could ever remember (Oh yeah at 7 pm you’d all be in the living room telling stories about the day )it was a time where Milk ( the milkman came every day before 6 am) was27 cents a gal,cigerttes 22 cents a pack( camel would put 3 pennies in the cellophane wraper) gasoline was 13 cents, penny candy ,soda pop 5 cents,etc and Salty Briean was the only wheather man for RI,MA, Cn lol THOSE WERE THE DAYS!

I’m 74 yrs old and know exactly what this is,before garbage trucks coming around and picking up garbage and waste you had two things in your back yard (1) was a 55 gal drum(metal canlarge) it had hole punched in the sides of this large can) and when your paper goods couldn’t be used for something else you’d bring them outside and put them in the barrel and when it got half full you’d go out and burn the used product , (2)now when mom couldn’t find any more ways to use the scraps (food potatoes ,meat,grease from bacon etc, ( potato skins where never part of the group,mom would make potato chips lol)) being ltalian mom would take what ever was left over from lunch and dinner and make a breakfast adding egg’s ( better know in the ltalian family as a FRETARD) and what ever the dog wouldn’t eat went in that funny looking storage with a pedal on it,think about this No cell phones,no computers, no emergency room as we know it, Dr would come to your house,if you had a cold mom would take a flannel shit tear it up put it on the radiator rub Vick’s on your chest an put the warm flannel over your chest,tuck you in give u a kiss and repeat this until you got better and if u didn’t then you’d have a Dr visit,and you gave the Dr what ever your family could afford ( never much over a couple of dollars,of course when it was time to go to school( no matter the distance or weather ,rain or snowed) you got up with the smell of food cooking and you could hear the bacon popping and you dad sitting at the table and sat down eat whatever,got dressed and waited till some yelled your name out and walked to school with friends who lived on the same street,those days were left the best thoughts one could ever remember (Oh yeah at 7 pm you’d all be in the living room telling stories about the day )it was a time where Milk ( the milkman came every day before 6 am) was27 cents a gal,cigerttes 22 cents a pack( camel would put 3 pennies in the cellophane wraper) gasoline was 13 cents, penny candy ,soda pop 5 cents,etc and Salty Briean was the only wheather man for RI,MA, Cn lol THOSE WERE THE DAYS!

Thank you for this thread! I am in the process of buying a house with one of these on the side and NO ONE knew what this was!! We were concerned that is was a cistern, a sump pit, a sewage grinder (mascerator) location... None of the workers or inspectors had ever seen one.

I can reasonable move forward with the purchase now.

I also have one in my backyard. Curious as well.😉

We had one of these garbage cans outside (away from the house) in the late 1940's. It was for food waste only. I can remember my mother pouring scalding hot water to kill the maggots around the rim during the hot summer months. Gross! Those were the days of annoying houseflies. Now I can understand why. I was just a little kid then, but I am quite certain that a local

farmer would pick up the refuse to feed his pigs.

MG in NH

It's a garbage container, once a week, the garbage man would come by and empty it, 90% of it went to pig farms

Lisa Haines, I grew up in Amherst,Mass and remember the Hood milk being delivered. One of my favorite things was Dreikorn’s bread in the orange wrapper. I remember my mother ordering the Hood Basic Cook book, copyright 1949, I still have it.

Aww I thought it had soul food recipes bro. :-]

I grew up in Lynnfield, MA in the 60s and we had one of those in our yard close to the porch door. it was for garbage…an early composting system, if you will. The cover was made of heavy metal with a foot pedal to help open it. Seems like yesterday…thanks for the trip down memory lane!

I came across this thread while searching for in-ground garbage pails. Having also grown up in MA in the 60s and 70s, I can tell you pretty much every single family home had one. I remember moving to a newly built home when I was 8 or 9, and my dad had to install ours: he was a real procrastinator so it actually stood above ground for a couple years. I always thought that was the reason for the accumulation of maggots. After my first sighting, I stopped agreeing to take out the garbage. That disgusting sight stays with me to this day! The city I now live in, LA, has just mandated that we start throwing our food waste into our plant recycling bins, and of course the first place my mind went was that above-ground/in-ground garbage container. The other thing I remember about the in-ground garbage containers was that the lids were extremely heavy--to keep out small animals. As a little kid whose mind tended to wander, I must have had the lid smash down on my hands a dozen times!

I am not using mine anymore and cannot leave two large holes in the ground. any suggestions with what ti do? i thoight about filling them with pebbles or covering them with pavers.

How should these be removed or filled in? Around here (Southern California) no one seems to know what these are, let alone how to remove them!

Remove the lid, then fill it with rock and then concrete, then you can loam over it and plant seed.

You don't really have to remove the entire pipe or sleeve. The lid probably unbolts from it. If not it might have to be cut off with an angle grinder and a metal cutting disc. Or leave it as a conversation piece and just fill in the hole if you're worried about children or pets falling in or creatures from the underworld coming out.

When filling, you probably don't really need concrete unless you want to, it's kind of a mess. Just get a round paver or some rocks for the top. Most of the fill can be soil or gravel or whatever. Soil will sink down as it compacts, even if you try to compact it when placing, which is why some people use gravel or concrete to fill voids.

I think it's kinda cool and would keep it if I had one.

Thats a yard garbage, inground from early 50’s

Yes, the posters in the thread established that about 4 years ago. :-]

I think whoever has them she use them as a time capsule now !!!

Great idea! I love time capsules. I built a shop building on the foundation of a house that had burned. When digging a trench for a footing for a doorway, we found a potato chip bag from 1989. I cleaned it off and it's like new, so I'm putting it into the time capsule that I'll put inside a wall of the shop.

In-ground garbage pail. Usually for wet garbage. It would have an inner bucket type liner. The trash guys would pull up the bucket, empty it, then put it back. Vintage, about 1940's 1950'

Pig pot nicknamed. Meat and veggies scraps were tossed into it, and the local pig farmer would regular come empty them and feed to his swine...