Over the many years of taking out the trash, I look back to a time when not everyone had a trash compactor or garbage disposal. I'm talking about those days when a paper sack from the local grocery store was your choice of trash collection in the house. For those of us that remember when there wasn't a choice of paper or plastic to carry your groceries in, we have a bond that not everyone can share. I don't know about every household back then but we usually would get up to ten paper sacks full of groceries from the store after my mom would do her food shopping for the following two weeks. After mom would remove the groceries from all the sacks, it was the job of my brother and myself to neatly fold the sacks and put them in a pile so they could be placed in the cubbyhole near the back door. My brother and I took turns when it came to taking the trash to the garbage drums. I say "drums" cause that's what most people had in those days, not everyone had those fancy steel trash cans with the snap on lids. We had two 55 gallon trash drums setting at the alley just past the back fence, like most of the people living on our block.
About every other day the sack we put trash in would get full and according to whose turn it was to take the trash to the alley, it was their chore to get the job done and replace the sack with a new one from the stashed pile we had near the back door. We had weekly trash detail so we would alternate to take the trash out to the drum. One week I would be on trash detail the next week my brother would do it. It was a good setup and everything should have worked accordingly but it didn't and us boys would hear about it if the trash wasn't out on time. Dad was very particular about having the trash out when it was time to take it to the alley. If he had to take out the trash, our chore allowance was cut down. Not a good thing when you're trying to save some money for that model airplane you seen at TG&Y.
Back to the matter at hand.
What did my brother and I consider constituted taking out the trash when it came to how full the trash sack was? It was all in the way you would smash it down with your foot inside the sack. You could pass this off over a day or so but sooner or later the foot stomp didn't work any more and the sack would get close to busting out. My brother came up with a brainstorm of an idea... just place another sack beside the other one so people could throw their trash in it. To him, this alleviated the problem of taking out the trash on a regular basis. Instead of making three or four trips a week to the trash drum, my brother would plan it so by the end of his week there would be trash left over for me to dump during my week. He would be taking out less trash but still receive the same allowance. This became an ongoing problem for me and I sent my complaints to the management to get it resolved. It was evident that my brother didn't take the chore serious as I did. Though it was a nasty job, it still earned me money, so I came up with the idea of monopolizing the trash business for myself. I would take on part of my brothers trash detail during his week as long as I got paid in return from his allowance. This worked out well for a while but things do tend to change. My dad brought in a small fiber drum with cut out handles and sat it where the trash sacks usually would sit. I didn't understand the logic with this. Instead of taking out one sack at a time and replacing it, there was now the problem of multiple bags being placed in the fiber drum and then having it dragged to the alley to dump into the drums. I began doing the foot stomp in the trash can as my brother had done in previous times. This way I would only have to take it out a couple times a week. Another problem arose with this idea. The can would get heavy and hard to carry. I came up with the idea of using a Radio Flyer wagon to haul the garbage can from the house to the alley. I thought...very ingenious for a seven year old. In time this would change too. As time passed with three teenagers in the house, we were constantly on the move and doing things. The trash was a neglected part of everyday chores. This gave way to the now familiar trash overflow. An event that takes place when the trash can is full but people keep throwing trash into it until it gets so high it piles in the corner and if you move the trash can the pile falls on the floor. I'm sure this happens to everyone once in a while. We all know what it's like to keep things in check when kids are around and there is no time to get everything done, like, taking out the trash. In every family there is at least one person that has trash detail and if it goes unheeded it piles up. In my younger days it was a paper sack in the corner. Today, if the kitchen trash can gets full, there is always one thing to fall back on. Most shopping places have these plastic bags that you carry your groceries home in that conveniently fit on the doorknob of anyone's back door to have a make shift trash receptacle. It's amazing!
The only problem is... you can only hang so many bags off the doorknob before you can't get out the door to take the trash out. Such a dilemma, where is my paper sack?
